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THE 

WRONG 

SHADOW 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


NOVELS 

Hepplestatj/s 

The Marbeck Inn 

The Silver Lining 

Fossie for Short 

Hobson’s (with Charles Forrest) 

PLAYS 

Three Lancashire Plays 
1?lays for the Meadow 
Hobson’s Choice 
Garside’s Career 
The Odd Man Out 
Graft 

Dealing in Futures 





THE 

WRONG SHADOW 


By 

HAROKD BRIGHOUSE 

n 



NEW YORK 

ROBERT M. McBRIDE & COMPANY 

1923 




Copyright, 1923, by 

Harold Bbighouse 


V 




c e K •* f 


Printed in the 
United States of America 


Published, 1923 


ul 


SUN 19 ’23 v ^ 

©C1A704925 

■%%$ V 




CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I The Two Dispensers . . 

II Audrey Goes to Walthamstow . 

Ill Little Londoners. 

IY Olga. 

V Comedy of the Canteen . 

VI The Increasing Peterkin 
VII Mr. Bassett Presumes . 

VIII The Moribund Mansion 
IX Adventures of a Play 
X The Future of Farundell . 

XI * ‘ Petronelle ’ ’. 

XII The Man from Ipswich . 

XIII Litherbrow House. 

XIV Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 

XV The Dropped Passenger . . . 


PAGE 

1 

23 

42 

69 

85 

110 

133 

147 

164 

188 

210 

229 

249 

270 

289 














THE WRONG SHADOW 







THE WRONG SHADOW 


CHAPTER ONE 

THE TWO DISPENSERS 

I 

I T was not a bad room as rooms of that sort go— 
the sort let to a lodger by the industrious wife 
of a clerk in an insurance company’s audit depart¬ 
ment. Calculating machines of terrifying efficiency 
go a long way in the organization of big modern 
offices, but something human is still required and 
Mrs. Euddle’s husband had the right high degree of 
accuracy and the right low degree of initiative to 
make him a satisfying and satisfied clerk. His wage 
transcended that of women because he was mascu¬ 
line and regular in attendance, but it assumed him 
to be a bachelor of simple tastes, and Mr. Ruddle 
was a married man with three children; so Mrs. 
Ruddle took lodgers. 

The lodgers hadn’t ousted the Ruddles from the 
front bedroom, for Mrs. Ruddle had her pride, but 
they occupied the front sitting room and had each 
a small bedroom at the back. Their names were 
Wyler and Bassett, and they were dispensers in the 

same branch of a multiple chemist. They were 

l 


2 


The Wrong Shadow 


qualified and certificated dispensers and so far were 
equals; but dispensing was not tbe vocation of Mr. 
Bassett. He hadn’t the temperament. 

The long form of Herbert Wyler unfolded itself 
from one of the camp-chairs on the hearth-rug. 
With a gesture that might have expressed the aban¬ 
don of a weary Titan if it hadn’t been thoroughly 
ineffectual, he tore in halves the paper he had cov¬ 
ered with formulae of the pharmacy and threw them 
to the fire. They did not reach the fire; they fell 
into the fender. Mr. Wyler’s good intentions had 
a way of lying about, crumpled and untidy. 

He stooped to pick the papers up, overbalanced 
by an accident that was half a purpose and collapsed 
languidly into his protesting chair. “Oh, what’s 
the use?” he asked with feeble irritation. Frank 
Bassett looked up from the table at which he was 
immensely busy with India ink, paper and text¬ 
books on lettering and design. “Bertie,” he said 
severely, “you’re Ruddling again.” 

A flush mottled Mr. Wyler’s sallow face. He 
hadn’t bad features, though they began better than 
they ended, but his complexion discounted them and 
when he was flushed, which was when he was pee¬ 
vish, and he often was, it wasn’t a pretty business. 
He stretched himself defensively and the camp-chair 
creaked alarmingly. His mind, not his body, felt 
cramped; it usually did when he desired to reply 
crushingly to a sally by his nimble friend. 

Finally, “Frank, you’re a romantic,” he said. 
Certainly, of the two dispensers, Frank who occu¬ 
pied himself with design and attended a class for 
poster art seemed visionary in his doings, while 






The Two Dispensers 


3 


Herbert, who studied chemistry, seemed to be put¬ 
ting spare time to its best practical use. 

You didn’t obliterate Frank Bassett by calling 
him romantic; he had thought about romance, and 
Wyler had his accustomed experience as archer of 
an arrow without a barb. “Romance,” dogmatized 
Bassett, “is a kite flown by reality. It is ambition 
flying high but not too high to be brought to earth. 
It is a kite one colors with one’s personal ideals and 
flies to see which way the wind will blow them, either 
in the direction which is practicable or in the direc¬ 
tion which is impracticable. You call me romantic 
because I have ideas.” 

That, Wyler thought, was his opportunity. He 
granted that Bassett had ideas, but to what did they 
amount? “Oh, yes,” he said, refining sarcasm from 
his voice, “you thought of these camp-chairs,” and 
leaned back to watch his friend’s discomfiture at the 
disproportion between romance and three and six¬ 
penny camp-chairs. 

Frank surveyed the chairs without complacency. 
“Strictly,” he said, “they don’t go with Mrs. Rud¬ 
dle’s light oak, but they are a Possession. They 
give us a stake in the country. If it were not for 
my having had the idea of camp-chairs we should be 
less comfortable than we are, and when we enter¬ 
tain we should have to be ostentatiously polite to 
our guests by sitting ourselves on the floor. This 
is not to boast; it is to indicate to you the value of 
ideas.” 

Herbert had something to say; he wished to assert 
that he, too, was a man of ideas and not mean ones 
either. Were there not, on the crumpled paper at 





4 


The Wrong Shadow 


his feet, half a dozen sound pharmaceutical ideas all 
pregnant with possibility, all capable of being de¬ 
veloped by enterprise into successful patent medi¬ 
cines? And then he hesitated. It was true that he 
hadn’t yet found the formula for which he searched; 
the paper was only another confession of his failure 
to find it. But he grew nearer, surely he grew 
nearer, and it was foolish to be discouraged. Even¬ 
tually, the idea would come. He groped for words 
which should express to himself first and then to 
Frank a profound confidence in his ultimate suc¬ 
cess, he signaled vaguely with his arm that, if Frank 
would give him respite, he had something important 
to say; and Frank ignored the signal and talked on, 
fluently, irresistibly. 

‘ ‘ But ideas are little things and I will use a larger 
word. I will say 4 dreams.’ Ideas are the small 
change of dreams and dreams are as necessary to us 
as the air we breathe. A man without dreams is a 
dead man and a man with a little dream is a man 
alive on a little scale. The matter with you is that 
you haven’t a dream that’s bigger than a semi-de¬ 
tached in Chiswick and Dorothy Hopkins with her 
hair down.” He continued to sit at the table 
despite the hindlegs fashion of his speech; he lec¬ 
tured, he dogmatized and didacticized; but as a 
polite concession he kept his seat. He winged his 
words and let them, and not their speaker, soar. 

Wyler did not keep his seat. Engaged himself 
in the search for expression and enraged by its elud¬ 
ing him, he had not heard Bassett’s opening, but 
Bassett’s ending brought him sharply to his feet. 
It might be true that silhouetted against the fur- 





The Two Dispensers 


5 


th.est far horizon of his imagining was a red brick 
semi-detached villa in Clapham Common but de¬ 
cidedly not in Chiswick; and never, not in the inti¬ 
mate audacity of his most secret dreams, had he 
thought of Dorothy Hopkins with her hair down. 
He often thought of her, but not as Dorothy, let 
alone as Dorothy in dishabille. He thought of her, 
with propriety, as Miss Hopkins, with the respect 
due from him to the daughter of the manager. Her 
smile had seemed to single him out from amongst 
the other assistants when she came to see her father 
at the shop but that seeming was due almost cer¬ 
tainly to his optimism. It had thrilled him and he 
was not worthy to be thrilled and therefore her smile 
had not been for him; it was the candid expression 
of her pleasant soul and he couldn’t lay claim to 
exclusive rights in sunshine. 

But anger did not give him fluency. ‘ 4 Camp- 
chairs !” he cried. “Camp-chairs. They’re the 
biggest result of your dreams to date. You . . . 
your mind is coarse. You, a romantic! You’ve got 
a head like a teasle.” 

He fell silent, cursing the barrier between the 
withering invective he imagined and the jerky truths 
he uttered. He never could explain why, out of 
shop hours, little Bassett had the ascendancy of 
him: Bassett was not a good dispenser, and his head 
ivas like a teasle. It bristled. He bristled all over 
his small person, and that, no doubt, was why women 
who were regular customers at the shop often 
waited till Mr. Wyler was disengaged when they 
need not have waited at all for the services of Mr. 
Bassett. His counter-manner was as bad as his 





6 


The Wrong Shadow 


dispensing was untrustworthy, and Wyler knew very 
well who of them stood first in the estimation of the 
manager. He thought now of the increase in salary 
which was coming to him and not to Bassett, and the 
reflection strengthened him to say, “All you’ve got, 
Frank, is the gift of the gab.’ 9 

“It impresses,” said Frank, without arrogance. 
“I’m five feet six and I’m going to get on. I have 
to have something impressive about me, but you’re 
wrong to call my flow of language a gift. You do 
me an injustice. It’s the result of practice; and it 
isn’t yet the smooth flow I aim at; its style is bad. 
Rococo, if you take me. At present, I’m self-con¬ 
scious about my height and that damages my style. 
I’m flamboyant. I feel the need of a platform and 
space in front of me, and a chance of looking down 
on the people I’m addressing. I need to know 
they’re straining their necks to look up to me, and 
I spend half my day straining my neck looking up 
to tall women across the counter of the shop. Have 
you noticed how this suburb runs to tall women? It 
gets at a small man. I’ve told Hopkins he ought to 
put a stillage behind the counter and he won’t do it 
because he’s tall himself and doesn’t need one. Do 
you know what that little grievance is, Bertie?” 

“Unfortunate for you,” hazarded Mr. Wyler 
morosely. 

“Fortunate,” Mr. Bassett corrected him. “It’s 
the irritating speck which causes the oyster to make 
the pearl. I’m the oyster and my future’s the pearl. 
Another five inches of height—your height, for in¬ 
stance—and I daresay counter-work and dispensing 





The Two Dispensers 


7 


would have satisfied me. I’d have been happy and 
had no ambitions. It’s damp feet that make you 
want new boots. I’ve got damp feet for ever—I 
mean I’m five feet six for life—and I want a lot of 
new boots. That fellow Ruddle. He’s an ass. 
He’s contented. He’s an awful warning, Bertie. I 
tell you what it is—” Mr. Bassett paused dramati¬ 
cally. 

Wyler obliged him with a “Well?”, and Mr. Bas¬ 
sett rose to his feet, he thumped the table, he stood 
on tip-toes. 

“Sooner than be a mediocrity,” he said, “I’ll be 
a splendid sinner, Bertie.” One can’t convey the 
emphasis: even capitals could not do justice to Mr. 
Bassett’s fierce assertion of his conditional inten¬ 
tion to sin. 

And Mr. Wyler had one of the rare, devastating 
inspirations which used to make his friend subside 
like a pricked balloon. 4 4 Damn it, ’ ’ he cried, 44 how 
do you sin splendidly in a ready-made suit? How’s 
it done, Frank?” 

With a conviction that he would not improve upon 
that question and that a good thing is best left alone, 
Mr. Wyler snatched his hat from the hook behind 
the door. 44 I’m going for a walk,” he mumbled 
and so went quickly out of the room. 

II 

Bassett was staggered, not because it was unique 
for the worm to turn but because this worm, after 
turning, usually turned again. This worm did not, 




8 


The Wrong Shadow 


as a rule, claim the last word, and “By 'Jove , 99 
thought Frank, “he shan’t have the last word now.” 
It was such a beastly good last word. 

“At any rate,” he shouted, opening the door, “I 
shave every day.” 

The front door banged at a moment which left it 
doubtful whether Mr. Wyler had or had not heard. 
Mr. Bassett returned to the table. “Tomorrow,” 
he stated aloud, “I shall go to a tailor ... a good 
tailor. I shall pay four guineas for a suit.” After 
that, he implied, he could challenge the world, he 
could (if necessary) sin on a scale of the most opu¬ 
lent splendor. And meantime he must reconsider 
Wyler. 

It was a question of dreams. Men dream in 
women; in stone; in sonnets. Frank Bassett 
dreamed in posters and in hoardings; he had a vi¬ 
sion of great hoardings covered with posters of his 
designing, bearing in huge lettering the name of 
Bassett. To that end he spent laborious hours at a 
School of Art and practiced doggedly at what he 
believed to be his job in life. He had on the table 
before him now an attempt which he thought credit¬ 
able. It represented a muscular man, attired in a 
tiger skin, and above the figure were the words ‘ ‘ Be 
a Leviathan” and below it the words “Buy Bas¬ 
sett’s Barley.” He liked the alliteration and he 
liked especially the word Leviathan. He rolled it 
on his tongue, and relished its sound in his ears. He 
admired it, in his lettering, as a massive word and 
intellectually he judged it provocative. People 
would think of the Bible and of whales. A strong 
fine word; a word of color. They could poke fun at 




The Two Dispensers 


9 


that word if they liked, and all the better if they 
did, for it would stand it. It would stick in their 
memories. 

“Barley,” of course, was quite wrong—a mere 
alliterative experiment in lettering. Barley might 
very well be the basis of a patent breakfast food, 
but one couldn’t launch a new food without much 
capital, and the idea of expending much capital 
(even if he controlled much) upon the article to be 
sold was grotesque. Money was well spent upon 
advertising, but the cost of the commodity adver¬ 
tised must be trifling. 

That was why it must be a patent medicine, and 
that was why he had made Herbert Wyler a sharer 
in his dream. Any dispenser knows by heart nu¬ 
merous common formulae but none of the com¬ 
mon formulae were right for Bassett’s purpose, 
none of them combined the two* essentials of 
being uncommonly cheap and uncommonly effec¬ 
tive. Doctor’s stuff would never do; its reactions 
were too slow, and the main object of a patent medi¬ 
cine, besides cheapness of manufacture, was to show 
results. You took it and immediately you had a 
sensation which justified the pretensions* of the ad¬ 
vertisements. It was useless to tell the buyer of a 
patent medicine to be patient. Doctors could do 
that, doctors could cure at leisure, doctors could note 
with satisfaction the gentle progress of a slow re¬ 
covery ; but the patent medicine* buyer was observer 
and patient in one; he was in a hurry and if the 
medicine did not very rapidly give him something to 
observe, he considered it fraudulent, proclaimed it 
a failure and turned either to another fraud or (in 




10 


The Wrong Shadow 


despair) to a doctor. Patent medicines were either 
magic or they were shams, and Bassett did not in¬ 
tend the mixture on which he bestowed the honor of 
his illustrious advertising to earn the reputation of 
being a sham. 

And he believed in Wyler’s chemistry. He be¬ 
lieved in it as much as he believed in his own genius 
for advertising. His affection for Wyler wasn’t less 
genuine because it was mingled with contempt for 
the humility of that gawky man, and he believed 
fervently that great things were to come, a succes¬ 
sion of slickly merchantable formulae, from Wyler’s 
chemist’s brain. But first was their first medicine. 
He set three farthings as the limit of cost for in¬ 
gredients to be retailed at a shilling and three 
ha’pence—the odd three ha’pence for the Govern¬ 
ment stamp which raised revenue and was meaning¬ 
less but impressive—and so far, Wyler had not suc¬ 
ceeded in producing a formula of urgent effective¬ 
ness at the postulated three farthings. Bassett be¬ 
gan to be troubled with doubts of Wyler. 

He could himself—but no; that was the trouble. 
He could not himself find that formula, his own best 
attempt worked out at the prohibitory cost of a 
penny halfpenny and Wyler had done better than 
that. Much better, but still not well enough. Wyler 
hadn’t come up to expectations, he hadn’t flowered 
and developed as it was reasonable to expect any 
man to flower and develop when made sharer in the 
sunshine of Mr. Bassett’s dream. Bassett must 
lead his partner but he didn’t want to drag him, and 
this devitalized Wyler was so doubtfully alive that 
even Bassett’s magnanimity in dreaming by two in- 






The Two Dispensers 


ii 


stead of in isolation had not evoked that formula. 

Not to mention Wyler’s beastly way of flashing 
now and then into savage satire of Mr. Bassett. 
But, “old Bertie,’’ he thought affectionately. “I 
think it’s good for me. A brake. Point is, I’m 
romantic and there’s not more than a razor-edge be¬ 
tween the romance that’s enterprise and the 
romance that’s lunacy. A salutary corrective. 
That’s what old Bertie is. He’ll make me think 
twice before I dash. And he is a chemist.” 

That last thought brought him to reflect upon 
Wyler’s conduct of this evening, his weariness, his 
discouragement. Oh, it would never do. He must 
find something stimulating to say to old Bertie when 
he came in. He must buck him up. Why, any day 
Wyler might do the trick. Prank’s eye strayed to 
the hearth and to the torn paper. How many at¬ 
tempts had Wyler made! How many, or how few, 
had wearied him? 

Frank picked the papers up and pieced them to¬ 
gether. He saw series after series of abbreviated 
hieroglyphics, each series accompanied by its 
proper arithmetical calculations. If some crude 
something cost wholesale so much a ton or a gallon 
what, in decimals, was the prime cost of the small 
quantity of that something per bottle to be sold at 
one and three ha’pence? Add the decimals to¬ 
gether, throw in other decimals for water rate and 
overhead charges and one arrived, each time, at a 
total disastrously higher than three farthings. 
Wyler had failed again, and Frank, counting the at¬ 
tempts, could not say he had not tried.. He appre¬ 
ciated industry; he felt kindly towards his partner 




12 


The Wrong Shadow 


who, if he had failed so far, had failed with honor. 

Suddenly Bassett’s face changed. Incredulity 
chased disappointment from it and astonished sat¬ 
isfaction replaced incredulity. Wyler had not 
failed; he had merely added up the decimals of one 
of his costings incorrectly. Bassett scrutinized 
them, and the drugs to which they applied. He 
was of opinion that the formula was found. 

“Lord,” he thought, “here’s news for old Bertie. 
This’ll polish up his view of life. But I’ll have my 
fun with him first. I’ll pull his leg, and then I’ll 
spring this on him.” He put the paper very care¬ 
fully into his pocket-book and sat again at the table. 

Quickly, with gusto, he drew paper to him and 
formed the lettering “Leviathan Tonic,” then he 
hid this below other papers and returned to his mut¬ 
tons as if a new light had not blazed in his sky. 
When Mr. Wyler came in, he found his friend assid¬ 
uously alliterative. “Bassett’s Body-Building Bal¬ 
last” and “Bassett’s Basic Brand” confronted him 
on the table, and the author of these phrases con¬ 
cealed a silent chuckle. It was going to amuse him, 
with such a card as he had up his sleeve, to chaff 
Wyler without mercy. 

He meant no harm but he meant to have his fun 
with Herbert, and the flaw was that Herbert had not 
come in in his usual character of target for the 
shafts of Bassett’s wit. Herbert was, as they say, 
a bit above himself and for three good reasons. He 
went out exulting after a good departure; he was 
braced by exercise; and he had drunk cheap whisky. 
He was not drunk, but he had mistaken a barmaid’s 
professional simper for a confession of admiration 





The Two Dispensers 


13 


and he was suitably impressed by the importance of 
being Wyler. 

“Bloomin’ bee,” he jeered, flicking a cynical 
glance at the widespread evidence of Mr. Bassett’s 
industry. i ‘Busy little bee, aren’t you?” 

i ‘Well, Herbert,” said Frank with praiseworthy 
restraint, “we’ve all our private madness.” 

Mr. Wyler was aggressive. “Is that meant for 
me? ” he asked. “I’m mad?’’ 

“I meant it for myself. I was thinking of a de¬ 
lusion of my own. The delusion that I have gump¬ 
tion. ’ ’ 

“It’s better called conceit. Conceit’s your 
capital. ’ ’ 

“Not the whole of my capital, Bertie.” 

“Conceit’s nine-tenths of it. The other tenth is a 
bottle of ink.” 

‘ ‘ And, ’ ’ smiled Frank, 4 ‘ a little cash. ’ ’ 

“So little that it wouldn’t be noticed in a mission¬ 
ary-box. Couple of benighted fools we are. Both 
of us. You for talking big and me for listening to 
you. What’s the good of sweating at this scheme 
when we’ve neither of us got the capital to back it?” 

“I’ve wondered,” said Frank, “I’ve wondered 
often w r hen you would raise that point. Now that 
you have raised it, I will disclose my guilty secret.” 

He was ponderously humorous, but humor, 
whether light or heavy, jarred on Mr. Wyler’s mood. 
“You’ve no right to have secrets from your part¬ 
ner,” he said. 

“Listen, Bertie.* Will you cast your memory back 
to the day when Tottenham Hotspurs met Chelsea 
in the Cup-Tie? Will you recall the views of the 




14 


The Wrong Shadow 


other assistants when Pd the afternoon off on that 
day? I said I was going to my aunt’s funeral at 
Highgate, and they said I was a liar. Naturally. 
You said it* yourself. But I showed Mr. Hopkins 
the letters and I did go to my aunt’s funeral. And, 
Bertie, my aunt left me four hundred pounds free 
of death duty. ’ ’ 

“Didn’t ought to have kept it from me,” com¬ 
plained Mr. Wyler. “It’s breach of confidence. 
Man who isn’t honest in small things isn’t honest in 
large—” 

“Bertie!” Considering that Bassett had the in¬ 
tention of putting the whole of his windfall into 
their joint ownership for the benefit of the firm, an 
accusation of dishonesty was, to say the least of it, 
provoking. “You’ll take that back,” he said 
doggedly. 

“Hoodwinking me. It’s sly. It’s slim.” Mr. 
Wyler drew himself up and perhaps the fumes of 
whisky rose with him. “It isn’t done between gen- 
’lemen,” he pronounced. 

“Pull yourself together, Bertie. Are you aware 
that you’ve accused me of—?” 

“Stolen my money,” said Mr. Wyler. “Give it 
me or I ’ll take it. ’ ’ 

And Bassett, with notable forbearance: “Come 
along, old man. Let’s get to bed.” 

“Trying evade the issue,” commented Wyler. 
“Shifty fellow, Bassett. Dodging eshpanashun, 
very suspishous circumstance.” 

“Oh, don’t be an ass,” said Bassett, feeling pro¬ 
gressively less benign with every moment. “Come 
to bed.” 






The Two Dispensers 


i5 


“Don’t wanner go bed. Wide-awake ass. Far- 
seeing ass.” 

“Hell!” said Bassett. “Far-seeing! I was 
wrong. I saidtyou did see as far as a semi-detached 
in ... in Balham . . . good place for asses, Bal- 
ham . . . reminds me of something in the Bible 
. . . or was it a bull? Never mind. You and your 
Dorothy Hopkins in a Balham bed-room!” 

Probably, if Bassett had refrained from mention¬ 
ing that lady, he would have got his friend peaceably 
to bed, but the gall of Mr. Wyler rose to her name 
like fish to fly. It was outrage only to be wiped out 
by blood. “Insult!” he said. “Gross-minded in¬ 
sult,” and struck vehemently at Bassett’s face. Not 
only aimed at, but hit the nose of Bassett with 
febrile force. Claret flowed. 

Bassett stepped back, holding his handkerchief to 
the effluence. Within him temper warred with tol¬ 
erance. The champion of Miss Hopkins made pug¬ 
nacious advance; chivalry demanded further satis¬ 
faction than a Bassett who bled for his grossness 
but bled upstanding. A second blow had unob¬ 
structed access to the offender’s face, and, after 
that, there was nothing for it but battle. Bassett 
let blood drop where it would, on clothes, on carpet; 
a righteous indignation spurred him to defeat his 
tall aggressor who put behind unscienced blows the 
cumulative weight of a hundred small Resentments. 

The hearth their ring, soon littered to the con¬ 
founding of their foot-work by the wreckage of that 
stake in the country, the communal camp-chairs. 
They wrestled amongst crashes in a disorder joined 
by the table-cloth, the India ink and Mr. Bassett’s 





x6 


The Wrong Shadow 


experimental poster-designs. Wyler tired suddenly, 
and the table-cloth gave Bassett an idea. Retarius 
Bassett was muffling a wanly struggling opponent 
in the folds of the cloth when Mr. Ruddle in dress¬ 
ing-gown which failed to hide flannelette pyjamas 
and Mrs. Ruddle in a less confessing gown appeared 
in the doorway. 

“I’m afraid he’s drunk,” panted Bassett in apol¬ 
ogy, and three to one, three for property, for law 
and order against one fought-out malefactor, soon 
had a sullen Wyler in physical control. Shall it be 
confessed that Mrs. Ruddle was the'most active, the 
most fearless of the three? Kicking her shins, 
Wyler kicked the curable; she shielded her chairs by 
her person, nor rested till (modesty’s for suave oc¬ 
casions) the enemy of order was undressed, in bed, 
asleep. Then to Bassett, “You’re out of this to¬ 
morrow, the pair of you. I’ll bring breakfast and 
your bills,” and left him to wash his wounds. 

It struck him as unjust; she penalized the police¬ 
man for doing his duty, but he had a limited capacity 
for resentment and, just then, physical pain made 
overwhelming calls upon emotion. ‘Stiffly he climbed 
into bed, resolutely postponing thought and pres¬ 
ently sleep’s benediction fell. 

He woke to the intention of having it out with 
Wyler at breakfast. But he did not have it out at 
breakfast. He never had it out. Wyler, leaving 
two sovereigns on his dressing-table, had packed his 
bag and gone. He was not at the shop and he never 
returned to the shop. He disappeared. In anger? 
In shame? Who knows? Least of all, Dorothy 




The Two Dispensers 


17 


Hopkins who may, perhaps, have once addressed a 
gracious smile to Herbert Wyler. 

Ill 

It wasn’t till late in the afternoon that Mr. Bas¬ 
sett remembered the formula, Wyler’s not his, and 
he expected opportunity sooner or later, to post it 
to its author. Late, certainly, rather than soon, for 
they established that Wyler had left no address with 
Mrs. Buddie, nor was any, save Mrs. Buddie’s, 
known to Mr. Hopkins at the shop. 

Hopkins, indeed, looked confidently to Bassett for 
word of Wyler’s whereabouts. They were friends, 
room-mates. Surely Bassett- had knowledge of his 
friend? A quarrel did not expunge the past, it 
didn’t obliterate from Bassett’s mind the home ad¬ 
dress of his intimate. 

“He never mentioned home to me,” said Mr. Bas¬ 
sett. “Holidays, he went to the sea-side. Different 
place every time. I remember that because it was 
the most enterprising thing he ever did. You’d ex¬ 
pect old Bertie to have stuck to Margate, wouldn’t 
you? And the same boarding-house in Margate 
every year. Yes,-and the year he stayed at Folke¬ 
stone, he went to Boulogne by the morning boat and 
you’d have said it was a dead certainty he’d come 
back by the evening boat. But he didn’t. He stayed 
the night in Fiance. Oh! Much more in Bertie 
than met the eye.” 

A sort of epitaph. He praised his friend and 
sought, besides, for hints in Wyler’s past to explain 




i8 


The Wrong Shadow 


his present disappearance. He suggested the ob¬ 
scure presence of a wild streak in Herbert Wyler. 

“But he must have received letters,” said Mr. 
Hopkins. 

“I didn’t read them,” said Frank, with some in¬ 
dignation. He was, absurdly, under cross-examina¬ 
tion in Mr. Hopkins’ cubby-hole of an office in the 
shop and resented his chief’s persistence. He was 
the injured party, still smarting in body from the re¬ 
sults of an unprovoked attack, smarting in pocket 
from Mr. Buddie’s professionally cool assessment of 
the damage to household property—“I’ll bring our 
head assessor from the office if you don’t like my 
figures,” Mr. Buddie had said with surprising firm¬ 
ness, and Bassett had paid a sum against which Mr. 
Wyler’s two pounds were an inadequate offset— 
smarting in pride from the defection of a partner 
whose use as a foil to Mr. Bassett had been consid¬ 
erable. And Hopkins, with a perversion of justice 
which infuriated Bassett, was blaming him, was 
actually and openly suspicious of Bassett’s state¬ 
ment that he didn’t know where Wyler was. 

“I’ve told you all I know.” 

“Most unsatisfactory, Bassett,” commented Hop¬ 
kins. “My best dispenser, going off like this. I 
must consider if it is not my duty to consult the 
police. ’ ’ 

But first he consulted Dorothy. He had, like Her¬ 
bert, the idea that Dorothy w r as interested in Mr. 
Wyler. Perhaps he had the hope. The salaries of 
branch managers of multiple chemists are not ex¬ 
travagant and a daughter off his hands . . . But 
Dorothy dashed his hope. She heard with calm in- 




The Two Dispensers 


19 


difference of the disappearance of Mr. Wyler. She 
gave no hint that the name of Wyler conveyed any¬ 
thing to her; there were many beaux to her string. 
“Really? A dispenser?” she said. “Annoying for 
you. You’ll have to get another one, won’t you?” 
She was cold to the point of being ruthless and she 
decided Mr. Hopkins that it would be officious in 
him to consult the police, but Mr. Wyler’s successor 
was without conspicuous merit and Hopkins nursed 
a grievance against Bassett who was (he held) first 
cause of Wyler’s going. § 

The address of the lost Herbert Wyler did not 
come to light, while the formula, experimented upon 
exhaustively, proved notably cheap and notably ef¬ 
fective. Bassett attributed a great improvement in 
his complexion to the fact that he was himself tak¬ 
ing, by way of trial, a course of the tonic invented 
by Herbert Wyler. 

And Hopkins resented him continually. It was 
maddening to think that the formula was not his, 
that he couldn’t gaily send Hopkins to the deuce and 
launch out, with his capital, his assured technique of 
advertising and his formula, as a patent medicine 
proprietor on a scale small, indeed, at first but . . . 
oh, he had confidence. He could win if ... if he 
could begin. 

The essential decency of Mr. Bassett will be per¬ 
ceived. He held a formula which Mr. Wyler had 
produced without knowing that he had produced it: 
and Mr. Wyler had disappeared with plain deter¬ 
mination to perpetuate the disappearance. Yet Mr. 
Bassett scrupled to act. For a long time he 
scrupled. 





20 


The Wrong Shadow 


Then he rented an outhouse, fitted it as a manu¬ 
facturing chemist’s laboratory at a cost of twenty 
pounds, and, leaving Hopkins, worked eighteen 
hours a day to put Bassett’s Tonic on the market. 
He did these things because he had held out against 
doing them till he could hold out no longer and they 
seemed inevitable. When he bought a ledger he in¬ 
tended to wudte ‘‘Bassett & Wyler” inside it, and to 
credit Wyler at each accounting with a half share 
of the profits: but it was Bassett’s Tonic and by 
agreement, from the day when he had first men¬ 
tioned his idea to Wyler, it was always to have been 
Bassett’s—to satisfy that secret craving of his for 
seeing his name in large lettering on many hoard¬ 
ings; and he couldn’t, when it came to the point, 
bring himself to write “Bassett & Wyler” in the 
ledger. “The half share’s his just the same,” he 
thought, and Bassett cultivated rather than sup¬ 
pressed his sense that Wyler was his partner. He 
found it stimulating, a reason and an excuse to make 
large profits, because, when halved, they were not 
spectacularly large. Wyler was a liability whom 
Bassett turned into an asset in those early days of 
the Leviathan Tonic. Its proprietor worked as two 
men, having the profits of two to earn. 

There are classic patent medicines which have no 
serious fear of competition, and Bassett envied 
them. He was noisy about his tonic, he bought 
much advertising space in newspapers, he covered 
many hoardings with his posters; he gratified him¬ 
self daily with the sight of his name and perhaps 
indulged that taste more lavishly than his sales 




The Two Dispensers 


21 


would bear. The Leviathan had a footing amongst 
patent medicines which were less than classic, but 
must struggle to keep that place and Bassett mort¬ 
gaged heavily the large, the unnecessarily large, 
building in Walthamstow where the Tonic was 
manufactured. 

In those dark days when war broke out he was 
bitter against Wyler, who left him to face the storm 
alone. He had put Wyler ’s share of the early, easy 
profits back into the growing business and had a 
moral itch about them. Things were wrong not be¬ 
cause of the war but because of the kink in their 
foundations; in sunshine Wyler cast a shadow and 
hung in gloom like the menace of a thunder-cloud. 
Bassett was almost religious about it. He re-ex¬ 
amined his beginnings and found no wrong that he 
had done; but neither were they right. 

Then came his splendid bargain with the Ministry 
of Munitions who left him a quarter of his Works 
for the Tonic while he made explosives to his profit 
in the rest. It was all sunshine, sunshine and the 
O.B.E., and the shadow of Mr. Wyler almost ceased 
to trouble. Bassett was too busy with affairs to be 
a Hamlet, obsessed by a ghost. 

He hadn’t quite laid the ghost, but success grows 
a membrane over sensitiveness. “ Under the 
Wyler” he used to describe himself on a bad day, as 
people use the phrase “under the weather”; on 
days, for instance, when recruiting hit hard at one 
of his favorite ideas. He had been, himself, an ex¬ 
igent recruiting officer. None but the physically im¬ 
pressive were salesmen of his Tonic; they were to 




22 


The Wrong Shadow 


figure as living demonstrations of its efficiency. 
War took quick toll of Bassetts staff, then turned 
from hampering to making him. 

He flourished gratefully, by-product of the war 
and the thought, “If Wyler comes,’’ was lodged in 
a locked lumber-room of his mind. His capital from 
the first, his advertising, his audacious purchase of 
the Works at Walthamstow! He had followed his 
star and Wyler—“Lord, what’s a formula?” he 
asked aloud on one of the rare days when that old 
disturbance came to him. 

And the war engulfed so many men. Wyler, who 
had once voluntarily spent a night in Boulogne, 
surely he had gone early to the war. And the men 
who went early. . . . 






CHAPTER TWO 


AUDREY GOES TO WALTHAMSTOW 

I 

C OLONEL EVELOW had a gentle weariness 
faintly tinged with foolishness and always 
scented, from Audrey’s earliest recollections of her 
father, with the rich aroma of an exemplary cigar. 
Like all his life, exemplary; perhaps excessively. 
The Colonel held it due to his position to live in a 
large house, to have his mile or so of private fishing 
and to do himself well as an English country gentle¬ 
man. In other words, he lived up to every penny of 
his pension and beyond it and if he thought of Aud¬ 
rey at all, he thought of her as married before he 
died and the pension with him. There w r as plenty 
of time for that and nobody would raise objections 
to the daughter of Colonel Evelow on grounds that 
she was portionless. “We Evelows,” he said so 
often, i ‘are of noble blood.” He was second cousin 

y * 

to a Marquess who once, when the Colonel was a 
chubby boy, had patted him on the head. 

And Audrey had her garden. 

It was a good war for the Colonel. He fought it 
from an office, no fool at the job they gave him but 
a little befooled by re-instatement on the active list; 
a happy dug-out with pay plus pension and rejuve- 


24 


The Wrong Shadow 


nated strength to enjoy both. Perhaps he overrated 
the strength; perhaps the strain in the office or the 
strain outside the office—London, in war-time, for a 
man grown used to placid country days—proved 
heavier than he could stand. He died, a happy war¬ 
rior, in harness. 

He took Audrey with him to London and it is not 
clear whether he disposed of her or whether she dis¬ 
posed of herself in a commandeered hotel with a 
typewriter in front of her, but what is clear is that 
while he kept up his position she kept herself and 
continued to keep herself after he had no position to 
keep up. 

The unmarried daughter of a colonel receives a 
pension; and there were many women in Audrey’s 
department who lacked even that small defense 
against indigence. She might without great diffi¬ 
culty have become a permanent official; she pre¬ 
ferred to remember the pensionless others and to be 
demobilized. She paid some visits after that. 

Once, poverty was hidden like a secret shame, but 
either taste had veered or skeletons outgrew their 
cupboards, and poverty displaced dyspepsia as hot 
favorite for the conversational stakes in the houses 
Audrey visited. There were some offers, palpably 
conventional, to find a home for her. She could 
have acted, unpaid, as nursery governess and she 
was not tempted. She could have become, unpaid, 
a gardener, and that garden of the soi-disant im¬ 
poverished did tempt her. She could have done 
things with those contours, but the offer was coldly 
made, and the suggestion was all but explicit that 
they disguised by it their duty of charity to one who 





Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 25 


would be, as gardener, incompetent and cheap, and 
she turned from that insult as politely as they 
offered it. “No. In London—” she said. “Ah, 
London. Of course,” they answered vaguely, and 
Audrey made a defiant showing of herself that night, 
wearing her mother’s jewels and a frock which an¬ 
nounced not Paris but, at least, London in opposi¬ 
tion to her cousins’ country town confections. “No 
poor relation stunt for me,’ ’ she thought, and tipped 
the butler with a royal recklessness next day. 

It brought a salve to wounded pride; it lightened 
her heart, and did not perceptibly (but that is the 
snare of paper currency) lighten her note-case, and 
not for many weeks did she regret the impulse of 
that unthrifty gesture. A five pound tip to a butler 
who wouldn’t tell; a five pound sop to pride! Why, 
on the scale to which she presently fell, there was 
living for three weeks squandered to win a butler’s 
smile. She was to learn that typewriting as prac¬ 
ticed under Government in war-time was a fallible 
asset. She was one of a crowd. A regiment of 
women? An army, demobilized, demoralized. A 
monstrous mob; but Audrey kept watch and ward 
against demoralization. 

She lay in bed in a small room at the top of a 
house in Claverton Street, Pimlico, listening to the 
morning postman’s knock as he progressed towards 
her number. A regular progression, never missing 
a house where each had many tenants, irregular only 
because sometimes, somewhere, a registered letter 
delayed him at a door. Nearer, nearer he came and 
Audrey tried to tell herself that hope was stupid and 
never succeeded in being stupid enough not to hope. 




26 


The Wrong Shadow 


. Bang! It echoed through the house. It always 
did, and in spite of her three stories up she heard 
not only the clang of the knocker but the fall of let¬ 
ters on the floor. So many of them? Surely, this 
time, there was one for her. She heard Mrs. Apple- 
ford go to the door, heard hen on the stairs and 
heard her knock on various doors. An indulgent 
landlady, Mrs. Appleford, distributing the letters to 
their owners instead of merely sorting them on the 
hat-stand, to be picked up by their addressees or 
perhaps by those who were not their addressees. A 
conscientious landlady, then, but anyhow a landlady 
whom Audrey now heard on the top stair, coming 
either to her or to the man who had the room at the 
back, or to both of them. She didn’t grudge the 
man a letter or a score of letters if only she had one. 
She answered so many advertisements; on the law 
of average, if for no other reason, she had the right 
to expect some replies, from the people, for instance, 
who had so unusually asked applicants to send pho¬ 
tographs. As if a typist were a chorus girl! It 
seemed a little risky, but she had sent and, hang it, 
if good looks were in question, she ought to stand a 
chance. 

Mrs. Appleford knocked on the opposite door. 
“My turn next,” thought Audrey and next moment 
heard footsteps going downstairs. Commonly, she 
heard with stoicism. To-day, if she wasn’t desper¬ 
ate, she was at least wrought up to a high pitch of 
eagerness. “Nothing for me?” she called out. 
“Not this morning, Miss Evelow,” replied Mrs. 
Appleford. 

Audrey lay back in bed; she wasn’t sure that she 





Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 27 


would not have need of bed-clothes in a minute. If 
she must cry, she would cry muffled. And she did 
not cry. She got out of bed and her lips trembled 
but “If I can’t keep a stiff upper lip,” she said 
aloud, “I’ll keep a straight back,” and slipped out 
of her night-dress into a bathing costume. Claver- 
ton Street debouches on the embankment, but Aud¬ 
rey was not going to bathe. She was, from observa¬ 
tion, fairly sure that only girls lived in the top- 
rooms of the houses opposite her, but she was not 
anxious to scandalize them. One can do anything in 
London; that is axiomatic; but Audrey wanted light 
and .air for her gymnastic exercises and, having no 
Swedish costume, compromised with propriety in a 
bathing-suit. 

In it, she raised the blind and opened the window 
to its full extent. She glanced at Claverton Street, 
shabby in sunshine. 44 Stucco via. Stuck over yer, ’ ’ 
she punned wryly. 4 4 But not stuck over me. ’ ’ Ex¬ 
ercise ensued and then the blind was drawn again 
and she bathed in a rubber bath filled from a can. 
Her sparrow-bath she called it, this salvage of the 
war, in which she stood in two inches of water and 
relied greatly on a sponge. Linoleum on the floor 
explains the complaisance of Mrs. Appleford. 
44 Things come unstuck inside you in the night,” 
thought Audrey. Courage, she meant. Water 
cemented it anew. 

Then Mrs. Appleford at the door, with apology 
for failing eyesight, and a letter which she had de¬ 
livered wrongly. 44 And I hope it’s the one you were 
expecting,” she said, not menacingly (Audrey owed 
her nothing) but genially. Mrs. Appleford lived in 






28 


The Wrong Shadow 


a Claverton Street basement and conserved genial¬ 
ity, secreted it below stairs and excreted it above. 
S^e is exhibited, momentarily, for your admiration. 
A widow, honest, clean, cheerful. One of thousands 
like her, phenomena of London, of the cities. Sun¬ 
shine lurks indoors in the cities; so often, country 
walls exclude it. 

It was the letter she expected. She was in¬ 
structed to call that morning at an office in Walt¬ 
hamstow. Audrey had not much idea where 
Walthamstow was—has any ordinary explorer of 
London the curiosity to go to that tremendous dor¬ 
mitory?—but North or East, by train, ’bus, tram, 
above earth or underground she meant to keep that 
appointment. Dry biscuits were her breakfast, 
eaten as she dressed. 


n 

“ About the time when gunpowder was invented, 
it was found necessary to board over the crystal 
floors of Paradise for the sake of the angels who 
wept to behold mankind instead of enjoying their 
just delights. A few peep-holes were left and it was 
ordained that a short spell as recording angel at one 
of the peep-holes should be the penalty inflicted on 
offenders against the by-laws of Paradise. The 
severest punishment was to be ordered on recording- 
shift at the peep-hole devoted to watching jerry- 
builders developing an estate. It makes one light- 
headed,’ ’ Audrey continued as the tram bumped her 
spitefully, “to come out without a decent breakfast, 
but, anyhow, that’s what I think of Walthamstow.” 




Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 29 


Then it occurred to her that her opinion of Walt¬ 
hamstow mattered to nobody, and that she wasn’t 
there to be whimsical or critical about it hut to 
make a living in it. She hoped she was going 
to make a living in it. Soberly she left the tram at 
the corner suggested by the conductor as the nearest 
point to the address she wanted, and Walthamstow, 
she thought, improved as she left the tram route 
behind her. 

London, viewed from the line going into Water¬ 
loo, is a disappointing capital, and she was reso¬ 
lutely hopeful now that Walthamstow was rich in 
beauty unseen from the tram. Certainly the build¬ 
ing, as she looked at it before entering, was not a 
mean one, and apparently things were going very 
well with that business, for new building was in 
progress. Building was for the few who could af¬ 
ford it in those days. Inside, she received the im¬ 
pression that Walthamstow was a healthy place; 
they were robust people in these offices. She found 
that she was to see Mr. Fosdike. 

It is the sickly, as a rule, who feel that health is a 
rude affront to their infirmity; but Audrey, who was 
no weakling, had an invalidish shrinking from the 
massive virility of Mr. Fosdike. If mind matched 
matter, here, indeed, was a great one of this earth. 
She hadn’t at that time seen Fosdike stand unnerved 
while Bassett called him imbecile; she took him, as 
most people did, at face value, and his luxuriant 
physique, his easy poise, his calm, which suggested 
confidence when it came actually of stupidity, did 
not fail to make on Audrey their anticipated effect. 

Fosdike belonged to the genus of the pachyder- 




30 


The Wrong Shadow 


mata—large, thick-skinned animals with little brains 
—and Bassett employed him chiefly as an ornament; 
a male secretary for show and two female secreta¬ 
ries for use were Bassett’s personal staff. But the 
female secretaries, also, must be living arguments 
for the efficacy of Leviathan Tonic. That was why 
Fosdike when drafting the advertisement for a sec¬ 
retary had required applicants to submit photo¬ 
graphs. 

‘ 4 Miss Evelow?” He scrutinized her, and she 
thought his scrutiny offensive when his intention 
was only to be thorough. He wanted to be sure, in 
a cosmetical age, that hers was nature’s glow of 
health. He had, being Fosdike, the idiocy to sup¬ 
pose that he could be sure on the evidence merely 
of eyes and man’s eyes at that. 

She restrained alarm, she curbed indignation, she 
remembered that she had her living to earn. 
4 ‘Yes,” she said. 

“I have your letter.” He made pretense to read 
it again. “Um. Yes. Mr. Bassett will see you 
himself.” 

She would, he hoped, deduce from his histrionics 
that the interview with Bassett resulted from the 
preliminary inspection by Fosdike. It did not. Bas¬ 
sett had gone through the photographs and “I’ll see 
this and this and this,” he had said. But the 
pachyderm had his pride. 

He led her through a door into Bassett’s room, 
which was an office, in egg-shell blue, with a normal 
roll-top desk and two typewriters on small tables. 
Nakedly an office where a man worked. Bassett 
might point to the typewriters and say, “Nerves? 





Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 31 


If you take Leviathan Tonic, my dear sir, you have 
no nerves. You have no need to turn your office into 
a rest-room,” but that was all there was of pose 
about Bassett’s office. It was a workmanlike apart¬ 
ment, and the only reason Bassett ever discovered 
for a business man’s isolating himself from his sec¬ 
retaries w T as that he might sleep after lunch. Bas¬ 
sett did not sleep. He did business, and the pres¬ 
ence of lady secretaries discouraged his callers from 
initiating the kind of conversation which did not 
bear upon business. 

“Miss Evelow,” announced Fosdike, placing her 
letter before his employer. “It’s only Government 
office experience,” he murmured. 

Audrey w T as conscious of a sniff. But the sniff 
did not originate with Mr. Bassett. It came from 
Miss Minniver. 

“Well,” said Mr. Bassett, “something to grow 
out of, eh, Miss Minniver?” He rose, rubbing 
genial hands together. He rose because he did not 
like tall women. He liked the women of his staff to 
be healthy, but not tall. He found that he had not 
to look up at Audrey. “And, I think, in other mat¬ 
ters very satisfactory. Very satisfactory indeed. 
Will you, Miss Evelow, do me the favor to sit here 
for a moment and to take your hat off?” He 
pointed to the typewriter with the vacant chair be¬ 
fore it. 

To Audrey this began to seem like something in 
a dream. The huge Fosdike, the eupeptic Bassett 
and Miss Minniver who combined a fetching trick of 
dress with an air of secretarial alertness and, of 
course, with the gloss of health which seemed every- 




32 


The Wrong Shadow 


body’s common measure in this remarkable Walt¬ 
hamstow office. Well, figures in a dream mustn’t be 
self-willed and (more practically) young ladies 
whose need of three pounds a week verged on the 
desperate mustn’t be hypercritical. Silently, she 
sat. 

Mr. Bassett caressed his chin, surveying her ap¬ 
praisingly but somehow (and it was* queer that she 
felt so sure of this) not insultingly. He glanced 
at Miss Minniver and then again at Audrey. “Yes. 
Oh, decidedly, yes, ’ ’ he said. ‘ ‘ The contrast in their 
colorings. Admirable.” 

An audible sniff from Miss Minniver, the blonde, 
suggested that dark hair marked inferiority. “If 
—” she said, rising. 

“To be sure,” said Mr. Bassett. “Of course, 
Miss Evelow, you take Leviathan Tonic?” 

“Well,” Audrey began . . . 

“Exactly,” he cut in quickly. “Your evident 
health results from your constant use of Leviathan 
Tonic. Should we decide to have you with us here, 
your Tonic will cost you nothing. A bottle will be 
issued to you weekly with your wages. I look after 
the health of my staff. Did you notice my Works 
Canteen? Surely? As you came in—a new build- 
ing.” 

“Oh yes.” 

“But,” said Miss Minniver, who appeared to 
have something on her mind. 

“Quite, Miss Minniver,” said Bassett. “I have 
not overlooked it. The subject is a delicate one. I 
was endeavoring to put Miss Evelow at her ease be¬ 
fore directly approaching the matter. A healthy 




Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 33 


staff, Miss Evelow. The Tonic ensures health of 
body, the Canteen and the Welfare programme en¬ 
sure health of mind. But—er—you come freshly to 
us. To be candid with you, we have been victimized 
by impostors. We have been deceived by people 
who came to us looking healthy when they were not 
healthy . 9 9 

“Do you want a doctor’s certificate?” Audrey 
asked. 

“The last secretary I had,” said Mr. Bassett, 
“put her health on in the morning and took it off at 
night. I shouldn’t dream of asking you to undergo 
a medical examination. I do ask you to go with 
Miss Minniver and to wash your face in her 
presence . 9 9 

1 i Does one laugh ? 9 9 thought Audrey, or was one to 
qualify for heroism by suppressing the all but un¬ 
conquerable urge to laugh? She saw Fosdike like a 
graven image, Miss Minniver solemn and hostile, but 
she caught in Bassett’s eye the glimpse of a twinkle. 
Thank God, the man was human. “It’s a fad of 
mine,” he said. 

That was better, the saving sense of proportion. 
“This way, please,” said Miss Minniver with the air 
of a Grand Inquisitor ushering a victim politely to 
the torture-chamber, and Audrey permitted herself 
a hinted twinkle back at Mr. Bassett as she turned 
to go with Miss Minniver. She hoped he did not 
misunderstand. 

Miss Minniver filled the wash-basin. She wore 
her frills like the bristles of a porcupine. This, she 
seemed to say, is an intimate room; let us, at least, 
attempt some intimacy in it. “Potty about people 




34 


The Wrong Shadow 


looking well, lie is,” she said. “Potty about his old 
canteen. Are you going to wash?” 

“I suppose so.” 

“ As if you needed to! As if I didn’t know you’re 
not made-up. Miss Levens—well, yes, she put it on, 
but he’d never have known it.” She looked hard 
at Audrey. “I told him. I gave her away and she 
lost her crib through it. That’s me, when I’m 
roused. Same game from any other girl, and I’d 
do it again.” 

“The game,” guessed Audrey who did not know 
if this was loyalty to the Bassett idea or a case of 
malice, “of deceiving?” 

Miss Minniver looked at her contemptuously. 
“I’ll tell you what I mean, straight,” she said. “If 
you’re coming here, and I think you are because 
you’re the pick of the three we’ve seen this morn¬ 
ing, it’ll be the same between you and me and him as 
it was between her and me and him. I found him 
first. See? That’s what Miss Levens forgot and 
she went for forgetting it.” 

“You found him first?” repeated Audrey. “Mr. 
Bassett?” Miss Minniver nodded. “You mean I’m 
to regard you as my official superior. I think that’s 
only reasonable. Your experience—” 

“Pardon my interrupting, but you’re not quite 
getting me. At least, I think you’re not. You may 
be acting innocent but I ’ll give you the benefit of the 
doubt. Did you see those photographs in the ‘Mir¬ 
ror’ last week? Two of them in one week!” 

Audrey made a shot which, she hoped, had intelli¬ 
gence behind it. She was finding a difficulty in fol¬ 
lowing Miss Minniver’s conversation. “Were they 





Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 35 


photographs of Mr. Bassett’s canteen?” she asked. 

‘‘ Guess again.” Audrey shook her head. 
“Where’s your eyes?” Then, kindly: “Oh, I see. 
You poor thing! I’ve been down on my luck my¬ 
self, but I’ve never been down so far that I couldn’t 
buy my ‘Mirror.’ Well, I’ll tell you then. There 
were two gentlemen engaged to their lady secreta¬ 
ries, one of them in the Government, too. He’s a 
baronet. The other’s a knight. I mean to say, if a 
girl had hopes before—and I’m not denying it or 
Miss Levens would still be here—well, seeing it in 
the ‘Mirror,’ with actual photographs, it does show 
you you’re not a fool to be fancying your own 
chances, doesn’t it?” 

“I see,” said Audrey, and Miss Minniver found 
something to resent in her manner of saying it. 

“You might say more than that without hurting 
yourself, ’ ’ she said. ‘ ‘ Meaning you think I’m hope¬ 
ful? Well, I am and there isn’t a tax on hope, is 
there? I know he’s got the O.B.E. but that isn’t 
a real title, like the gentlemen in the ‘Mirror’ had, 
and I’m sure I make a better photograph than either 
of their lady secretaries did. ’ ’ 

“Oh, please, please! I wasn’t thinking that.” 

“Then what were you thinking, if it’s a fair 
question?” 

It wasn’t a question, anyhow, to be answered fully. 
Audrey was trying to decide an opinion of this girl. 
If she thought her vulgar or even if she only thought 
her pathetic, the implication was that Audrey 
thought herself superior. In looks she was not 
superior; in breeding . . . but breeding had noth¬ 
ing to do with the question of being competent in an 






36 


The Wrong Shadow 


office, and as for Miss Minniver’s designs upon Mr. 
Bassett, why shouldn’t she have designs upon him? 
Audrey did not picture herself as a rescue-party. 
Bassett had, certainly, by a companionable twinkle, 
signaled to Audrey an understanding which excluded 
Miss Minniver as it excluded Mr. Fosdike. Unless 
she exaggerated, or mistook. It might have been 
another sort of twinkle altogether. He might be 
that sort of man. She didn’t know, but clearly a 
Minniver-Bassett affair was no business of hers. 
Rather beastly, but she had found so many ugly 
things in life lately, and before she could find words 
in which to reply, Miss Minniver spoke again. “ Yes. 
No use pretending we’re the same sort, is it?” 

‘ ‘ Oh! ” gasped Audrey, disconcerted by her pene¬ 
tration. 

“ You’ve been used to other things. Dogs. 
Horses.” True enough, and why should she feel it 
as an accusation to which she must make defense? 

“I never had my own horse”—a poor defense. 

“But you rode.” 

“Yes.” 

“That’s the difference,” said Miss Minniver. 
“But you’ve been in a Government office since then. 
Buff slips aren’t the only sort of slips in Govern¬ 
ment offices.” 

Had she so crudely shown her revulsion from 
Miss Minniver? Then she was punished on her 
merits. The girl was right: Audrey was being con¬ 
ventional, she who had seen the war through in a 
Government office. “I’m making myself ridicu¬ 
lous,” she said aloud. 




Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 37 


“That’s all right/’ said Miss Minniver in the 
tone of one who graciously accepts apology. “Male 
and female in an office aren’t any different from 
male and female in the Garden of Eden. Only for 
clothes. And marriage. I hold with marriage my¬ 
self. I was brought up old-fashioned. So now you 
know where we are. I’m all for being straight and 
open with you. Some girls would just say nothing 
and watch you. I’m not like that. I’m not catty 
till I’m forced.” 

“I understand,” said Audrey. Indeed, she was 
within reach of admiration. “Direct” and “sim¬ 
ple” were adjectives she was inclined to substitute 
for her first hasty “vulgar” and “pathetic.” Life 
was vulgar. She had been coming, slowly, to admit 
that life was vulgar ever since Colonel Evelow came 
out of his retirement. At first, she thought it was 
only w^ar that was vulgar, and only this war because 
it was being fought by temporary soldiers. But 
peace seemed no less vulgar than the war, and vul¬ 
garity was neither war nor peace but life. Her 
eager cry “But it needn’t be!” came to her lips less 
often now. There were fine things in life, beneath 
the avalanche, but one only saw the ruin. One be¬ 
lieved in the hidden treasure, but it was an effort to 
remember one’s belief. The so much greater effort 
was the necessary one to keep alive. “Believe me, 
Miss Minniver, I do understand.” 

“My name is Gladys,” said Miss Minniver, by 
way of sealing a compact. ‘ 1 And, ’ ’ she added reflec¬ 
tively, “it’s just as well for you that you’re sensible. 
I couldn’t get you out of my way by peaching on 




38 


The Wrong Shadow 


your complexion, seeing it ’s natural. It ’ud have to 
be something more serious for you. Stealing 
stamps, I fancy.’’ 

“Oh!” 

“Well, Audrey, a girl’s got to look out for herself. 
I wouldn’t do it willful, but I’m nasty when I’m 
roused, and I’ve the advantage of knowing the ropes 
here. We’d better go hack now, or he’ll think 
you’re having a bath.” 

“I’d better wash, though, so that you can say—” 

“Rot,” said Miss Minniver, “I’m not a man” and 
“O.K.” she pronounced to Mr. Bassett on their re¬ 
turn, and it was evident from his welcoming smile 
that, if she would, Audrey could consider herself 
engaged. 

Beggars must not be choosers, but neither was 
Bassett’s quite an open market, and Audrey had 
heard that she was the pick of three picked appli¬ 
cants seen that morning. She did not want to drive 
a bargain, but she wanted to know how far this 
health-craze of Bassett’s went. 

“May I ask something? I’m a healthy person but 
—suppose I have a headache?” 

1 * The Tonic—, ’ ’ he began. 

“No. Suppose in spite of the Tonic that I’ve a 
headache? Suppose it makes me look ill?” She 
imagined the strain of having always to appear 
radiantly well. “Abandon ill-health all ye who en¬ 
ter here.” Was that written over Bassett’s por¬ 
tals? In that case, she thought hell might be de¬ 
fined as a place where people were always well. 
Bassett’s Tonic was not the faith by which she lived, 
and she did not propose to be paid nominally as sec- 





Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 39 


retary and actually as propagandist by person of 
Leviathan Tonic. Fitness was amongst her creeds, 
but one was fit because it was decent to be fit, be¬ 
cause of personal dignity, because fitness in London 
gave one a sense of victory over circumstance, but 
fitness exploited by herself and by Bassett was fit¬ 
ness degraded, and neither was she going to be pe¬ 
nalized for a lapse of fitness. The lapse brought its 
own punishment, and unjustly enough to her who 
strove after fitness, and certainly she was not going 
to be penalized again by Bassett. He could (meta¬ 
phorically) jolly well keep his hands off her body 
or— 

“Well,’’ he was saying, “we don’t expect mira¬ 
cles, Miss Evelow. But we have to guard our posi¬ 
tion. We erect our defenses against the retort 
‘Cure yourself ’ by being in no need of cure.” 

“But don’t run away with the idea that it’s just 
salesmanship,” said Gladys. 

“ No, ” said Bassett. ‘ 4 It isn’t ‘ just’ salesmanship 
because it’s good salesmanship and salesmanship is 
never good unless it has conviction behind it. If 
my advertisement read ‘Leviathan Tonic makes an 
A 1 nation,’ you’d have the right to look skeptical. 
(You are looking skeptical, Miss Evelow, and I am 
not wasting my time on you because you’ve got to 
share the faith of those in this office that there is no 
limit to the good that Leviathan can do.) But that 
advertisement reads, not boastfully but truthfully. 
It reads ‘Leviathan Tonic is the Basis of an A 1 
Nation! ’ ” Very earnestly he emphasized, “It is the 
basis. I do not say that every buyer of a bottle of 
Bassett’s Tonic is expediting the Millennium: but I 




40 


The Wrong Shadow 


do say that he sows well and better than he knows. 
It is a good Tonic, as Sunlight Soap is a good soap 
and as Cadbury’s Chocolate is a good chocolate, but 
is soap the best thing in Port Sunlight and chocolate 
the best that can be said of Bourneville Village? I 
am not yet a Leverhulme or a Cadbury, but my vi¬ 
sion is perhaps wider than theirs. Model villages? 
Model towns ? But what of a model England, whose 
light shall spread from Walthamstow? Already, 
minnow that I am amongst the Tritons, I have a 
gymnasium attached to these Works, I have a can¬ 
teen building to centralize the social activities of my 
people and—” 

He baulked abruptly, looking at Audrey. “You 
have a speaking eye, Miss Evelow. It tells me as 
plain as words that a gymnasium and a Works Can¬ 
teen are precious small things by the side of a lot 
of tall talk.” He struck the table. “Bassett’s is 
the lever of a healthy England. ’ ’ 

“We are crusaders,” said Miss Minniver un- 
winkingly. 

“Ah,” said Bassett, “crusaders indeed. You 
never let me down, Miss Minniver.” 

“Fooling him to the top of his bent,” thought 
Audrey, watching Gladys caress Bassett with the 
devoted eyes of a steadfast devotee. “At least,” 
she said, “I can see the interest of it all”—including 
Miss Minniver’s campaign. 

And, “Interest,” said Gladys, with a fine scorn of 
this tempered admiration. 

“Even a crusader can have a headache,” said 
Audrey. “It’s an imperfect world—as yet.” 

Mr. Bassett grudged her head the right to ache. 




Audrey Goes to Walthamstow 41 


“Well . . . yes,” lie smiled himself down from a 
moral high horse, “and—” They settled hours, 
and she was able to think of him as the business man 
who was employing her rather than as the proprie¬ 
tor of a menagerie of animals for exhibition, and 
indeed, whatever he was—salesman hoist by his own 
petard, befooled by his own window-dressing, ideal¬ 
ist rampant or bombastic charlatan—she thought 
him likeable. 

•But Gladys Minniver. That Gladys Minniver! 




CHAPTER THREE 


LITTLE LONDONERS 

I 

I N due process of things—that is, when Audrey 
had been junior secretary to Bassett for a 
month—she shed her doubts of his sincerity. It was 
droll, perhaps, but he was veritably well-intentioned. 

That was droll because Audrey’s life had so far 
led her into places where the official view was the 
right and only view, and the official view of a patent 
medicine merchant was that he was a poisonous 
quack. Bassett was short of being poisonous—care¬ 
fully his advertising recommended his Tonic to the 
“normally constituted,” and to at least seven out 
of ten of its consumers it did no harm, for they could 
stand the strychnine in it, and brought them the 
positive good of longer sleep and stronger appetite 
—but he admitted the quackery. The point was 
that he had gone beyond his tonic. 

He might put it, this extension of himself, so low 
as to say that it was forced upon him because a 
man must have an occupation and to have started 
an avalanche is not to be continuously occupied; but 
there was more in it than that. Paradoxically, this 
quack, this nostrum-vendor was genuinely and al¬ 
truistically concerned for the health of England, and 

42 


4 


Little Londoners 


43 


the tonic was only a means to get the money and the 
power to carry out a grandiose scheme of benevolent 
autocracy. 

A top-heavy ambition, but Mr. Bassett hadn’t 
missed the mark when he called himself romantic, 
and of course there was Wyler in it, not as living 
man but as living motive. He had long since con¬ 
cluded that Wyler lay beneath the mud of Flanders. 
True, Wyler hadn’t known that Bassett’s Tonic was 
W T yler’s formula, but placard England with the 
name of Bassett, print that name in conspicuous let¬ 
tering in every English newspaper, and it was not 
reasonable to suppose that Wyler had failed to see 
it. Even if he was abroad, it was still not reason¬ 
able. Englishmen see English papers wherever 
they are, not all the time but often enough to re¬ 
assure themselves of the stability of things. Wyler 
couldn’t, in all these years, have missed seeing Bas¬ 
sett’s name and surely, if he were alive, he would 
have come to look him up or he would have written. 
Old Wyler nurse resentment for so long, especially 
when, on reflection, he must have realized there was 
nothing to resent? Bassett did not believe it of his 
friend and there was the war which was (amongst 
other things) a vehicle of disappearances. Wyler 
might, through pride or accident, have voluntarily 
maintained aloofness in the years before the war, 
intending some day, and postponing, to reveal him¬ 
self ; and then, if not before then, went where self¬ 
revelation is impossible. Bassett, at least, believed 
it to be impossible and left unexplored the chances 
of spiritualistic communication; he was a practical 
man. As practical man, he considered the heirs of 




ft 


44 The Wrong Shadow 


the late Herbert Wyler, and as practical man ig¬ 
nored them. They existed, no doubt, but explana¬ 
tion presented difficulties, and to part with a moiety 
of his gains, when he needed all and more than all 
to satisfy his humanitarian aspirations, was not to 
be thought of. 

Rather, he did think of it and capitalized the obli¬ 
gation. The heirs as liability were written off; they 
figured as an asset and a re-inforcement of his 
vehement desire to spend himself and the Tonic- 
made fortune upon compelling England to be 
healthy. And it was long since he had thought of 
his incentives just as it was long before he expected 
to be at the beginning of his dream’s realization. 
He wasn’t, even, a millionaire yet! He was a busi¬ 
ness man bent upon the increase of his business and 
the use to which he meant to put his resulting for¬ 
tune was not for publication. There were the first 
tentative, imitative experiments such as the gym¬ 
nasium and the canteen at the Works, and they 
might very well have not been more than was 
summed up in a phrase of Max Peterkin’s—“ decent 
burial for war profits.” 

' ii 

Benevolent autocracy, even in its experimental 
opening stage, is hampered by the reactions of its 
victims—of those who, so surprisingly to the all¬ 
wise autocrat, persist in seeing themselves as vic¬ 
tims of a tyrant. 

Audrey, finding a gymnasium on the premises, 
bought a tunic and proceeded with zest to enjoy her- 





Little Londoners 


45 


self. She hadn’t, since school, had a gymnasium as 
her playground, and Bassett’s was delightfully 
equipped. Her muscles had softened, but her skill 
had not departed. Had she, once, listened with 
every nerve on edge to the postman’s progress down 
Claverton Street and felt the dreadfulness of cares 
on the edge of want! She was riotous now on par¬ 
allel bars with youth and the joy of mastery: she 
went on, that evening, being joyful beyond the hour 
prescribed for the joy of women. Women could be 
gymnastic until seven, and from 7.30 till ten the 
gymnasium was for men. It was 7.15 and Audrey 
didn’t care. She swung and rolled on the bars and 
took a great and venial pride in the steady harden¬ 
ing of her muscles and their responsiveness to the 
calls she made upon them, and it seemed to her now 
that if the angels wept when the jerry-builder made 
Walthamstow, they must have smiled when Bassett 
made this gymnasium in his Works. 

She sat on the bars at rest from graceful evolu¬ 
tions to find that she was not alone in the gym¬ 
nasium. The other girls were where she should 
have been, in the dressing-room, if they hadn’t left, 
and men were not due out of their dressing-room 
on the far side for another quarter of an hour; but 
a red-haired young man was suddenly seen to be 
climbing a rope. Gym shoes on a padded floor 
tread silently; and if she lingered keenly beyond her 
proper hour for going, why shouldn’t he keenly an¬ 
ticipate his proper hour for coming? But she 
watched him with surprise. She watched him, even, 
with disgust. 

The disgust was not because he was an intruding 




46 


The Wrong Shadow 


male, but because be made so wretched a job of 
climbing a rope. He was intent upon his climbing, 
too. He was so earnest about it that he hadn’t 
noticed Audrey on the bars. Surely he hadn’t 
noticed her? Surely no man would willingly have 
made so pitiable an exhibition of himself before a 
woman! He strained and panted and hauled himself 
up slowly and ungracefully with egregious inexpert¬ 
ness. And then he fell, not from a great height, for 
in spite of his manifest struggles, he had not at¬ 
tained one, but his hands lost grip on the rope and 
he fell. 

Audrey ran to him and he sat up, swearing. The 
Spartan view condemns padded floors in gymnasiums 
(gymnasts should not fall and, if they must, should 
have the knack of falling softly), but probably it was 
due to the padding that Max Peterkin was able to sit 
up and swear; certainly it was not because he had the 
knack of falling softly. He fell au naturel. 

“Are you hurt?” asked Audrey. “Badly, I 
mean,” she added, feeling her question superfluous 
to the point of idiocy. 

“Yes. I’m hurt,” he growled. 

“I’ll go for help,” she said. There was an in¬ 
structor somewhere on the premises, and a first-aid 
outfit in his charge. She turned quickly, and he 
caught her ankle, with the natural result that she fell 
by him. 

“What on earth—?” Audrey was not hurt, but 
she was excessively astonished. She sat on the floor 
and looked at the perpetrator of outrage. 

“I beg your pardon,” he said. “But it was the 





Little Londoners 


47 


only thing to do. I’m not hurt badly enough, yet. 
I expect I’m bruised, hut I’m not broken.” 

“You speak as if you wanted to be broken.” 

1 ‘1 do. That is my ob ject. ’ ’ 

He looked sane. Vivid red hair is not known to 
be a sign of insanity; and his face was pleasant 
enough, sulky just now, but such a fall would account 
for more than sulkiness, and she thought his a good, 
keen, well-featured face. He wasn’t in whites. 
Shoes, ordinary trousers and a collarless shirt were 
his gymnastic get-up; an improvisation which could 
not improve his appearance, and in spite of it he 
had the air, positively, of being brainy, which was 
altogether absurd in a man who—but she couldn’t 
stare at him for ever. “Your object!” she re¬ 
peated. 

“I take it that you are one of us,” he said. “You 
wouldn’t be in Bassett’s gymnasium if you weren’t in 
Bassett’s employ.” 

“I’m in the office,” she said. 

“Oh! I’m in the works. That’s why I’ve not 
seen you before. But being one of us, you’ll under¬ 
stand why I want to break my leg. ’ ’ 

“I’m afraid I don’t,” said Audrey, edging away 
from him to put a safe distance between them be¬ 
fore she ran for help. 

“No? You’re a woman. Women have no sense 
of humor. I am going to break my leg to show 
Bassett there’s something his damned tonic won’t 
do.” 

She thought that if either of them demonstrated a 
lack of humor it was not she, but the young man, 


i 






48 


The Wrong Shadow 


who proposed to break his leg in order to prove to 
Bassett something which Bassett had never asserted. 
To make time, she said, “But why insult me? Don’t 
you know that people would rather be told they’ve 
no morals than be told they’ve no humor?” She 
was not edging from him now; she sat studying his 
face and guessed that this was a case of nerves. To 
a neurasthenic Bassett’s Tonic, Bassett’s advertise¬ 
ments and Bassett’s Works would be infuriating and 
unbalancing. She wanted to ask the young man 
what he did in the war; the reply might explain 
him, but the question seemed indiscreet and she did 
not ask it. 

“I meant to break my leg,” he said morosely. 
“Of course, you’re right. I can’t do it now. I al¬ 
ways fail. I fail at everything.” 

“Listen,” said Audrey. “You haven’t failed to 
interest me.” 

“I didn’t try to interest you. And it’s just like a 
woman’s damned egotism to suppose I cared whether 
I interested you or not.” 

“Politeness isn’t your long suit. Here I am in¬ 
credibly sitting on the floor by the side of a young 
man who knocked me down—” 

“I didn’t. I . . .” 

“You tripped me up, Mr. ... I don’t know your 
name. ’ ’ 

“Peterkin. Max Peterkin. That’s a bally name 
to wear, isn’t it? Bally, I said, not bloody. The 
poor thing isn’t worth an honest ‘bloody.’ ” 

“I’ve heard worse names, Mr. Peterkin.” 

‘ ‘ But not often. What’s yours ? ’’ 

She told him. ‘‘Yes,’’ he said, ‘‘and you a woman! 





Little Londoners 


49 


There’s body in a name like yours. It puts you 
somewhere. It says you’re someone. You aren’t 
anybody, I know, but a good name is a start in life 
by itself and if the name’s better than you are at the 
beginning, you’re likely to catch it up as you go on. 
I can’t catch up Peterkin.” 

“You can change it by deed-poll.” 

He shot up to his feet, apparently oblivious of 
bruises. “Never! A coward might do that. But 
I—I’ll live it down. No name’s silly when it’s 
.famous.” Mr. Peterkin blushed. Stammeringly he 
said, “I mean ... No; all right, I won’t get at 
Bassett by breaking my leg. Idiotic idea, isn’t it? 
But something must be done about Bassett. We 
must get at him some way. You’ll observe I said 
‘we.’ ” 

“Yes.” 

61 Yes. Because you ’re in Bassett’s and intelligent. 
Do you remember how many people were to be found 
in order to save Sodom and Gomorrah? I don’t, but 
two just people could save Bassett’s. This physical 
nightmare. This impudent interference with the 
right to be ill, when we’re all ill, all of us.” 

4 4 Oh, come, ’ ’ said Audrey, though she wanted him 
«to talk himself out. She thought talk would relieve 
his feelings less painfully than leg-breaking; but she 
struck at the generalization that we are all ill; she 
was not ill. 

44 Yes, all this generation,” he said, 44 all of us 
who were of cannonable age.” So she was right. 
Shell-shock, she supposed; something, anyhow, that 
had left him unbalanced. 4 4 But you and I might 
do something about Bassett’s. I wonder, though. 





50 


The Wrong Shadow 


You wear that rig-out and apparently you like this 
gymnasium.’ 9 

“I do.” 

“Oh, Lord,” he said dejectedly. “But you look 
so—” He sought an adjective in vain. “I dunno. 
So much better than that. I’ll give you a chance. 
Tell me, Miss Evelow, do you read Conrad ? ’ ’ 

Just as, at a dance, one might s&y to one’s partner, 
“By the way, 'do you know the exact mileage to 
Mars?” or as one says, while watching a cricket 
match, “Well bowled, sir. You must be a Uni¬ 
tarian. 9 9 

But Audrey was by now standing up to her eccen¬ 
tric and his eccentricities. Let him go off at any 
tangent and she meant to follow him—with some as¬ 
surance that no place to which he led her would be 
dull. 

“Yes,” she said. 

He gave a whoop. “ ‘Lord Jim?’ All through? 
Didn’t stick in the middle and say it’s a man’s 
book?” 

“No. I didn’t stick. But I prefer ‘Nostromo.’ ” 

With a gesture he said: “It has pleased heaven 
to save Bassett’s.” 

Audrey did not see how, and said so. ‘ ‘ By sanity, ’ 9 
said Max. “By enabling me to start a movement 
for the glorification of something other than the flesh. 
Obviously, you and I run a literary section of the 
Welfare Society.” 

“Oh!” She thought of the mountain in labor to 
bring forth a mouse: and this was a stillborn mouse. 
A Literary Society! And she had felt so sure that 
Peterkin’s suggestion would not be dull! “Oh,” 





Little Londoners 


5i 


she said, “don’t disappoint me, Mr. Peterkin. Let 
us admit that Bassett crusades for the salvation of 
our bodies—” 

“I don’t admit it. Crusades, indeed, and for our 
salvation! For his banking account, if you like.” 

“Well, you want to reply by crusading for our 
minds. And—why crusade at all, for anything?” 

“Good Lord, I am mistaken in you,” he said 
gloomily. 

“Because I won’t crusade?” 

i 1 1 thought you something better than the ordinary 
have-a-good-time girl.” 

“Why? Because I include Conrad as well as cine¬ 
mas and dances when I can get them? Perhaps I’m 
a have-the-best-of-every-good-thing girl. That isn’t 
to say I get all the good things I*want,” she added 
defensively. Mentally she, dubbed him a prig, and 
her impulse was to shock him not for his good but 
for her private entertainment, but she could not 
entertain herself at the price of hoisting the Jolly 
Roger on morality. She would not have him think, 
this interesting but casual acquaintance, that she 
was a “good-time girl” in the dreadfully frequent 
sense of a “no-restraint” girl. She found, she may 
have been too apt to find, good in everything, but 
she wasn’t now the colonel’s daughter living in an 
old house amongst country flowers and her life since 
then had made her practical pessimist enough to be 
aware of some of the pitfalls of optimism. She did 
not hesitate because she and Peterkin had not been 
introduced conventionally—that sort of thing be¬ 
longed to the past and the colonel’s garden—but she 
felt that the pace of their march to intimacy was 





52 


The Wrong Shadow 


unguardedly hot. Besides, he was anti-Bassett and 
if she wasn’t actually pro-Bassett she certainly 
wasn’t going to associate herself with a demonstra¬ 
tion against him. She liked Bassett. But she liked 
Peterkin. She liked everybody, except Gladys Min- 
niver and even Gladys had her qualities; she was 
competent, anyhow. Was it mere amiable weakness 
to like everybody? At any rate, she had liked Bas¬ 
sett for a month and she had liked Peterkin for ten 
exciting minutes and a snub seemed due for him. 
She preferred, before making up her mind about 
Peterkin, to inspect him later when he was calm (if 
he was ever calm), when he hadn’t just been pre¬ 
vented by her from breaking his leg in a grotesque 
impulse of rebellion and—when they were both in the 
clothes of everyday life. She became conscious of 
her tunic and of him as a young man and of the 
other young men of Bassett’s who were to be heard 
in the dressing-rooms preparing to come out. They 
would find her assertively isolated with Peterkin, 
defying rules, together in a place where the sexes 
had each their separate and proper hours. 

“Good-by,” she said abruptly and ran to cover 
in the ladies’ dressing-room. 

Ill 

On the Saturday afternoon following her encoun¬ 
ter with Max Peterkin, Audrey sat in her room in 
Claverton Street dealing, not too skillfully, with a 
ladder in a stocking. Her education had presumed 
that her stockings would not ladder or that, if they 
did, other people than Audrey would then possess 




Little Londoners 


53 


them; and as she struggled with her needle she was, 
in fact, thinking rather of her education than of the 
work in hand. She did not think critically of her 
education; she thought of it in connection with 
friendship. 

In her last term at school she had read Cicero’s 
“De Amicitia” and tried to dredge up from memory 
some ancient wisdom about friendship. But, 
“School’s a long time ago,” she said, giving up 
hopes of finding help from the classics. The point 
was, she recognized that friendships, like other good 
things in life, demand continuous effort, and Audrey 
had hesitated, not through indifference or laziness, 
but from the feeling that her present position marked 
a fall in the social scale, to make advances towards 
old friends. 

There were the Evelows and the Maitlands, on her 
mother’s side. The Maitlands had proposed to make 
her an unpaid nursery governess and the Evelows 
had offered unpaid gardening. She could do with¬ 
out the Evelows and the Maitlands. But there were 
others; there were school-friends and, more recently, 
friends made in the office of the Government during 
the war. One went on in life, up or down, but ought 
that to influence friendship? If one was liked it was, 
surely, for one’s self and not for one’s circumstances, 
and if friendships were real they ought to be above 
changing circumstance. That was idealizing it, 
though. The arc of circle A might cut into circle B 
which cut into C with its own left arc, but that did 
not bring A and C together; friendship was handi¬ 
capped where there wasn’t communion of the same 
dances, the same dressmakers, the same restaurants 




54 


The Wrong Shadow 


—but it needn’t be extinguished even if sbe ate habit¬ 
ually in tea-shops, and her old friends at the Carlton. 
Besides, they didn’t eat at the Carlton, they ate in 
Soho and dinner in Soho (Soho extends, for dining 
purposes, from the “Good Intent” in Chelsea to the 
“Plane Tree” in Bloomsbury) wasn’t beyond her 
means once a week or so, say on Sunday nights. 
Of course Susie Dale, her best school-friend, had 
married a soldier who had now gone back to his 
ranch in Rhodesia; but there were others, others. 
She had gone to Bassett’s, but Bassett’s was not her 
world. She was wasting her week-ends. She was 
leaving unexplored the possibilities of comradeship 
in London. 

Then there was a knock on her door, mechanically 
she said “Come in,” and Max Peterkin entered the 
room as if in denial of the thought that Bassett’s 
was not her world. 

The admirable Mrs. Appleford had not shown 
him up. Landladies don’t, in Claverton Street. 
They describe the position of their tenant’s door, in 
this case, “top floor front,” and they experience no 
surprise at a young man’s calling on a young woman 
who lives in a bedroom very thinly disguised in the 
daytime as a sitting-room. They are perfectly 
respectable landladies of perfectly respectable ten¬ 
ants, but they are educated landladies. The houses 
in Claverton Street were so far behind the times as 
to have no bath-rooms, but the occupants had mod¬ 
ernized, at any rate, their landladies. In other days 
the barriers were up against such a meeting in such 
a place, in other quarters of the town the barriers 
may still be up; but not in Pimlico, not in Chelsea, 




Little Londoners 


55 


not (but there are die-hards here who oppose the 
spread of the new civilization) in Bloomsbury. 

All the same, Audrey was taken aback. Any caller, 
a woman as much as a man, would have surprised 
her, and this man, her red-haired eccentric of the 
gymnasium, of all men! He was even the more sur¬ 
prising because he did not look eccentric now. It 
appeared that, when not intending to break his leg, 
he wore pince-nez, and wore them well, too, on a good 
straight nose that—but she had no time for further 
observation then. Later, she noticed that there was 
nothing noticeable about his clothes, and found the 
fact impressive. 

He panted slightly. “A lot of stairs,” he said, 
4 ‘and but for you I couldn’t have come up them. 
May I apologize? I’m here to apologize for making 
an ass of myself the other day. I’d Bassett on the 
brain, and . . . and ... I say, do say I’m for¬ 
given. 9 ’ 

“How did you find me here?” she asked. If he 
wanted forgiveness, he had it as a matter of course, 
but she wanted on her part an explanation of his 
seeking her out in this manner. 

“I got it from the office,” he said, and “How?” 
she wondered but let him go on. “I had to see you 
to say this, and we can’t talk like human beings at 
Bassett’s, can we? Great idea of yours to live up 
West.” 

She supposed she did live “up West.” “Well,” 
she said, “a room’s a room nowadays. I had this 
and it seemed a waste of time to look for one in 
Walthamstow. It takes an hour and ten minutes 
backwards and forwards each day, but—” 




56 The Wrong Shadow 


“But worth it,” he said, “to be at the center of 
things . 9 ’ 

She nodded vaguely. The center of what things? 
What use had she made of a central address which, 
it seemed, he envied her? And what use could she 
make? 

“By the way,” he was saying, “can it be taken 
that I am now sane? Let’s wash out the other night 
and let’s begin now.” 

“Begin!” she said, and “Begin on what basis?” 
she just refrained from saying. True enough, in 
the days not so long ago when she was a temporary 
official, she had had callers in Claverton Street. 
Girls, though, as a rule. Indeed, she did not remem¬ 
ber a man’s coming by himself, and lately no one 
had come. Demobilization seemed to have broken 
whatever bonds had held them to her, and here was 
Max Peterkin who claimed with cool assurance the 
right to call upon her as if he belonged to . . . well, 
it was a charmed circle which had the right. She 
didn’t want to be a snob, but this modern free¬ 
masonry of access to people’s rooms involved, surely, 
some sort of preliminary guarantee. She thought 
that he assumed too much. But he assumed as 
though such assumptions were so usual with him 
as not to be assumptions at all; and he had the ac¬ 
cent and the clothes of a gentleman. Was it snobbery 
in her to consider these things ? She decided it was 
common prudence. A young man from Bassett’s, a 
Walthamstow young man, and, lucid as he now 
seemed, a young man given to hysterical violences! 
She wanted, she needed friends; she had just medi¬ 
tated friendship and decided that its first quality 






Little Londoners 


57 


was to be above circumstance; but she weighed the 
evidence in the case of Max Peterkin and thought 
his claim unproven. The point was that, nowadays, 
young people did things in a way which their parents 
would have thought scandalously lax; but the young 
people were not lax unless and until they had estab¬ 
lished a sure foundation of mutual confidence. 

Audrey could not be sure of Max and, ‘‘I accept 
your apology for your conduct in the gymnasium, 
Mr. Peterkin,’’ she said very stiffly. “By all means, 
let us regard that as forgiven and forgotten and—I 
don’t think there is more to say.” She held out her 
hand. She was every inch the Colonel’s daughter. 

Apparently he did not see the hand. “You’ve 
read ‘ The Shadow-Line ? ’ ” he asked. ‘ ‘ Do you call 
it a pukka Conrad or is it only Conrad imitating 
himself? Is it, so to speak, ‘Conrad in quest of his 
Youth’ by Joseph Conrad and not by Leonard Mer¬ 
rick?” 

She wasn’t to be side-tracked by an exhibition of 
pyrotechnical literary allusiveness. He must be be¬ 
sotted by self-complacency if he failed to see her so 
emphatically outstretched hand. 

He saw it and, “Oh, come,” he protested. “The 
ramrod pose! My dear Miss Evelow!” 

“You have said what you came to say, Mr. Peter- 
kin.” 

“Not a fraction of it,” he asserted cheerfully. 
‘ ‘ Shall I warn you I’m unsnubbable ? There’s your 
door and if you tell me to go out of it, of course, I go, 
but I’d rather you took my bet.” 

“Bet? What bet? Who mentioned a bet?” 

“The bet that before I go home to my two rooms 




58 


The Wrong Shadow 


in Walthamstow to-night, you and I are Audrey and 
Max to each other.’ 9 

An impudent insult? A man who came unasked 
to her room, a virtual trespasser, and he proposed 
to be on terms of Christian name familiarity with 
her in a few hours? She knew she walked with un¬ 
certain steps in this modern world, but surely this 
was inexcusable in any decent people’s world. 
Surely—and yet she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t a ques¬ 
tion of manners but of manner; he hadn’t the airs of 
gallantry or conquest. He stood poised on firm 
ground seeming to say that if either of them was 
making a failure of this meeting, it was certainly not 
he. And he did not stand in arrogance. It was as if 
he said, “Let’s wash out that old man-and-woman 
business and let’s be pals together.” And she was 
hungering for friendship. 

Then, since it never rains but it pours, there was 
another knock on her door and Susan Hammond 
came in with Michael Murdoch. Michael’s six feet 
offered her protection; she had only to say to him, 
“Please kick this trash out,” and Max would be 
given a second chance of breaking his leg; but she 
did not say it and she knew she did not wish to say 
it even before she perceived that, as Susan kissed 
her, Michael and Max were shaking hands as old 
friends. 

So he was, after all, “right!” Michael’s hand¬ 
shake was a certificate. “You here, Max!” he was 
saying. “I didn’t know you knew Audrey.” 

“Well,” said Susan crossly, “that’s likely to be 
our fault. A lot of people can have cropped up with 
Audrey since we saw her last.” 




Little Londoners 


59 


“My fault, though,’’ said Audrey. 

“It isn’t. It’s Michael’s.” 

1 ‘ Fact is, ’ ’ said Michael, ‘ 6 we’ve been quarreling. ’ ’ 

“About your usual subject?” This from Max, and 
Audrey saw, with annoyance, that he knew more of 
Susan and Michael than she did. “Oh, well, better 
scrap before than after.” 

After what? Heavens, did he mean marriage? 
Were Susan and Michael engaged? Possible, of 
course, and the thought that it was possible made her 
realize again how thoroughly she had dropped out, 
how’ far she had traveled in isolation since those 
crowded days at the Ministry when Michael, Susan, 
she and a few others' of both sexes had known all 
there was to know about each other. “You’re not 
engaged!” she cried. 

“Yes,” said Michael; “No,” said Susan; and 
“That’s what the quarrel’s about,” said Max. 

“Well,” said Susan defensively, “he is an amor¬ 
ous ass. Always nozzling round me. Won’t be 
shaken off.” 

Michael grinned blandly. “The fact that you’ve 
not seen Audrey for six months shows that you’ve 
been doing something else pretty busily,” he said. 

“I’ve kept out of everybody’s way,” said Audrey, 
partly because it was true, partly because she was 
jealous of Max’s superior knowledge of her friends. 
They hadn’t hidden themselves from Max. 

“Hard times, Audrey?” asked Susan. Audrey 
nodded. “Yes,” said Susan, “you would be proud, 
and you’re a pig, Michael, making me forget Aud¬ 
rey.” 

They exchanged confidences then, and Audrey had 




6 o 


The Wrong Shadow 


no further occasion to feel that the conversation was 
elusive. Susan, since she was demobilized, had be¬ 
come secretary to the secretary’s secretary of a big 
Trade* Union. (“Labor!” said Audrey, aghast: 
“The only Trade Union,” said Susan proudly, 
“that uses a dictaphone and has Adam mantelpieces 
in its head office”—a facer for Audrey who, if she 
had thought of Labor’s organizing itself at all, 
thought of its doing it furtively in scrubby by¬ 
streets, in cellars with concealed exits through which 
conspiratorial agitators bolted when the police raide J* 
their headquarters). Michael, she was relieved to 
hear, was in the City preparing, five years overdue, 
for his chartered accountant’s final and she knew 
where Max was (“In the poison-gas of peace,” he 
said. “Chemist to Bassett’s”), but that didn’t ex¬ 
plain his evident intimacy with Susan and Michael, 
and she thought, too, that they might have been less 
cheerfully incurious about her evident intimacy with 
Max. Max must be, equally with them, very much 
“in” something, and she wondered in what. 

“But where did you three meet?” she asked. 

“First-nighting, of course,” said Susan, convey¬ 
ing very little to Audrey, though it was a complete 
reply to her question. 

“And, by the way,” suggested Max, “hadn’t we 
better all go to a show to-night? You two will get 
morbid by yourselves.” 

“There’s no first night,” objected Michael. 

“I know. But Jove nods. We can’t always be sit¬ 
ting in judgment on the British drama. Let’s go to 
a revue.” 

Audrey said something vaguely about the unlikeli- 




Little Londoners 


61 


hood of being able to get tickets on Saturday for a 
revue. 

4 ‘Tickets!” cried Susan. * 4 Some people don’t 
know the war’s over yet. You ’ve a lot to learn about 
how the poor live . 9 9 

“But we do live,” said Michael. 

“'Well—we try,” said Max. “And you’re the 
lucky one, Audrey, living where a ’bus brings you 
home in twenty minutes.” He had called her Aud¬ 
rey, and she did not resent it. 

IY 

Audrey was first mystified, then pleasantly disem¬ 
barrassed, when they surrounded a marble-topped 
table in a tea-shop and Michael asked, “As on a 
first-night, or are we Saturday night suburbans ? ’ ’ 

“We’re as usual,” said Susan, taking up the bill. 
“I make it one and thrippence each, and principles 
are principles. ’ ’ The principle, for instance, of equal 
pay by men and women, and Audrey saluted it with 
gratitude; she did not wish to be under obligation to 
Max Peterkin. 

Later, as they sat on the gallery steps of the 
Vaudeville Theater waiting for the door to open, 
they were apologetic to Audrey. It was not a first 
night, it was Saturday night, and they were to see a 
revue. She was asked on those three counts to make 
allowances, to tolerate, this exceptional once, their 
fellow keepers of a vigil. On first nights, she was 
to understand, they were very different people who 
sat on the gallery steps, or stood out in the street 
when there were no steps to sit upon. “Not that 




62 


The Wrong Shadow 


Pm proud,’’ said Susan. “But I like theaters and 
I can go to the gallery three times for the price of a 
booked seat.” 

“At,” Audrey criticized, “the cost of much time 
wasted outside.” 

But that, it seemed, was where she made a com¬ 
mon, but outrageous mistake. They did not waste 
time. They were a social club. And they said that 
the buskers who annoyed or entertained the queues 
on ordinary nights knew better than to interrupt the 
philosophic conversation of a first night queue. 

What Audrey had, at any rate, to grant was that 
her three friends were on terms of jollity with one 
another and that this camaraderie resulted from 
their habit and their cult of going to the gallery 
on first nights. It seemed a sound testimonial to 
an arduous form of playgoing, and they, by the way, 
denied that it was arduous. And for the benefit of 
uninstructed Audrey, they discussed first principles 
of first-nighting. 

“May I put it my way!” asked Max. “First 
nights are little things and we make much of them. 
As a general proposition, we’ve the right to make 
much of little things to-day. We’ve been surfeited 
with big things. Let’s live intensively for a while. 
We’ve had a war; we’ve had enough extensive liv¬ 
ing. Give us the parish pump in our time, Oh Lord! 
Progress be damned. Let’s be happy. Let’s do 
unimportant things. Let’s create little differences, 
like the difference between a first night of a play and 
any other night, and let’s feel the difference im¬ 
portant. Let’s pray that nothing more seriously 
important will ever happen to any of us. And if a 





Little Londoners 


63 


first night is nothing else, it’s a social occasion for 
the gathering together of a number of people who 
happen to be interested in plays. They might choose 
the fiftieth night and they might see a smoother but 
duller performance if they did; only there may be 
no fiftieth night; there may, conceivably, be no sec¬ 
ond night (it has happened); so the safe thing and 
the most amusing thing is to go on the first night. 
It amuses us: I don’t suppose it amuses them—the 
actors who may be in work for a year or out of it 
in a week, the management who put up the money 
and the poor devil of an author sweating in his box 
and hating the audience like hell or like a prisoner 
hates the jury.” 

“But we are the jury,” said Susan. 

“They don’t call us a jury, though. If we like 
a play, and say so, we are ignored. If we don’t like 
it, and say so, we are pilloried in the papers as 
‘hooligans’ or ‘organized opposition.’ This search¬ 
light of the Press, ’ ’ he went on dryly, ‘ ‘ causes some 
of us to have swelled heads. It leads to our taking 
ourselves seriously.” 

“Let’s take our drama seriously, anyhow,” said 
Michael. “I think the critics listen to us. They 
trust the gallery.” 

“You’re a sign-post to critics!” scoffed Audrey. 
“Oh, come!” 

“If the gallery were swept clear of fools, we’d be 
a sure sign-post,” said Michael. “You see the con¬ 
clusion, Audrey!” 

“No.” 

“Why, that you must come to first nights in the 
gallery and occupy a seat that might otherwise be 




6 4 


The Wrong Shadow 


filled by a fool. Help us to take plays seriously, 
won't you? Frankly, we're recruiting officers." 

“New recruits yourselves, aren’t you?" she asked. 

“Susan and I. Max is an old hand." 

‘ ‘ Old enough, ’ ’ grinned Max, ‘ 1 to have got beyond 
this hanging judge, reformation of the Drama busi¬ 
ness." 

“You wanted to reform Bassett’s with a Literary 
Society, though," she said. 

“Bassett’s is so beastly physical. Like war. Like 
an army," he differentiated. 

“And you are serious about first-nighting, Max," 
said Susan. “It isn’t a game to you." 

“But it is. A game isn’t a game until it’s played 
seriously. Is that a John Bullish thing to say? I 
don’t take my amusement sadly: I do take it seri¬ 
ously, but I don’t take first night applause seriously 
enough to suppose, as Michael does, that it influences 
the critics." 

“Does it matter?" asked Michael. “That’s the 
point. Do plays, books, pictures, music, matter? 
If they do, we’re right to trouble ourselves about 
their rightness. If they don’t—but pf course they 
do. Plays happen to matter to us and your luke¬ 
warmness, if it’s real—’’ 

“Oh, they matter," said Max. “They matter to 
us, being what we are—right away from the spirit 
of the age. ’ ’ 

“What is the spirit of the age?" asked Michael 
hotly. 

i ‘ Petrol, ’ ’ said Max. ‘ ‘ Motor-cars and aeroplanes. 
Ask me if I’d rather have made a motor-bike or 





Little Londoners 


65 


have written ‘ Dear Brutus’ and I reply ‘Dear 
Brutus.’ But that’s my minority mind.” 

“You’re not helping us to recruit Audrey,” com¬ 
plained Susan. 

“No. I found her in a gymnasium, enjoying it.” 

‘ ‘ Well, I am recruited then, ’ ’ blazed Audrey. ‘ 1 So 
there! ’ ’ 

And “there” was exactly where he had calcu¬ 
lated, by his opposition to Michael, to get her. 
“Meantime,” he said, “we’re going to a revue. 
They propose to entertain us. Let’s cultivate the 
magnanimities. ’ ’ 


V 

It was not a first night and even that eager mis- 
sioner, Susan, was not called upon for jury duty, or 
it might have occurred to Audrey that the dimen¬ 
sions and amenities of the Vaudeville gallery were 
strongly suggestive of a jury-box. She was not far 
enough from the stage, in that small theater, to wish 
for telescopic eyesight, but she wished for telescopic 
legs. Michael arranged his knees expertly on either 
side of the man in front of him, and Audrey looked 
wryly at him as he pressed unavoidably against her. 
“The rigor of the game,” he said, “or where the 
cinema scores.” “Next time,” said Max, “we’ll 
take her to the fourpenny gallery at the Old Vic. 
Recruit drill for her.” 

Certainly this was pleasure on Spartan terms, but 
the human body has adaptability; there was a period 
of give and take and Audrey’s, “If you can’t be easy, 




66 


The Wrong Shadow 


be as easy as yon can” was considered a correct, 
if unoriginal, contribution to gallery philosophy. 

“We’re a case for moralists,” said Michael. 
“This modern luxury!” 

“The Elizabethans,” said Max, “stood in the rain 
in innyards to see Shakespeare’s plays.” 

Well, let them try her with chaff: she could stand 
it. “Packed like sardines,” commented Susan, with 
a just perceptible tilting of her nose that might or 
might not hint allusion to the smell of oil; it was a 
Saturday night gallery. “Oh,” said Audrey gayly, 
“what’s one and thrippence for a leasehold in Sar¬ 
dinia?” and “Audrey,” declared Max, “you’ve 
passed. You’re one of us.” 

Then the revue, the casual, intimate, delectably 
Frenchified revue of one of the few theaters which 
had a policy and didn’t vary it. Clever people in 
front of simple scenery, with enough wit to create 
for a dined audience the illusion of brilliancy. Up 
in the gallery, they hadn’t dined, but, as Michael had 
proposed, they “cultivated the magnanimities.” 
Revue, anyhow, presumes the will to be entertained 
on the part of its audience; preposterous to go surly 
or superior to a revue—an offense against the rules 
of the game. One surrenders phlegm and one re¬ 
ceives in return the key to Cloud-Cuckoo* Land. 
Pity the obstinates who old-Englishly decline sur¬ 
render of their native phlegm! 

Still, not exactly a dramatic entertainment, and 
if, for Audrey, there were two moments of drama 
they were moments belonging to the audience’s and 
not the entertainers’ side of the footlights. The 
first was when, the revue well under way, two people 





Little Londoners 


67 


came into a box and her eye strayed to them. Bas¬ 
sett and Gladys Minniver! So Gladys was cam¬ 
paigning with success. Feeling mean but tempted 
irresistibly, Audrey borrowed Susan’s opera glass 
and examined Gladys’s clothes. A bloodless vic¬ 
tory, she judged, so far; then felt furious with her¬ 
self for judging at all. “I’ve a beastly mind,” she 
thought. 

The second moment connoting drama was merely 
this, that whereas, before the interval, the order of 
their seating was Michael, Audrey, Susan, Max, it 
was, after the interval, Max, Audrey, Susan, Mi¬ 
chael. She decided that it was not accident, but 
that the re-arrangement had nothing to do with her; 
it was because Max felt that the loverly antagonisms 
of Susan and Michael had been soothed away and 
that they could be left safely to sit together, and his 
conduct when they came out of the theater did noth¬ 
ing to disturb this view. 

Susan and Michael, self-absorbed now that their 
time for parting with each other was at hand, went 
off together with a scant ‘ ‘ Good-night. ’ ’ Max said: 
“Well, I’ve to get home to Walthamstow. Oh!” 
The “Oh” was not for her, but for a ’bus. As he 
leapt to its footboard she thought she heard “Good¬ 
night, Audrey,” and even of that she wasn’t sure; 
it might have been only that she expected it. 

Certainly she did not expect him to “see her 
home”; certainly, she had only to walk along half 
the Strand to her Pimlico ’bus; certainly, she was 
used to walking alone. But—was Walthamstow so 
difficult of access that he need have hurried his go¬ 
ing? When five minutes, at the outside, would have 




68 


The Wrong Shadow 


enabled him to go with her to Trafalgar Square and 
to put her in her ’bus! She remembered that he 
had seemed to say “Let’s wash out the man and 
woman business: let’s be pals,” and there had been 
the emphasizing of that attitude in their each pay¬ 
ing their separate shots for tea and for the theater. 
All the same, Susan and Michael were evidence that 
the “man and woman business” was not excluded 
from the galleries to which they had recruited her. 
And . . . and . . . 

And one of the cars now drawing up to the the¬ 
ater doors was certainly Frank Bassett’s. Gladys 
had been sitting in a box with him, and no doubt that 
was after having had dinner with him, and no doubt 
she would be riding in the car with him to be 
dropped at her door by him. 

“Oh, this will never do,” she thought—this in¬ 
sensibility to the glamour of the gallery, to the new 
comradeships opened to her, to friendship. And 
there was a regnant fact. A clamorous fact. Aud¬ 
rey was hungry. Hunger explained fretfulness, and 
she had biscuits and cheese at home. She would 
make some cocoa. 




CHAPTER FOUR 


OLGA 

I 

A UDREY hummed the insidious chorus which 
Mr. Walter Williams of the Vaudeville Theater 
had so easily persuaded the audience to sing with 
him last night. Then she sat up, resolute to ex¬ 
punge that gay irrelevance. “But it’s life,” she 
thought. “My life, if it isn’t other people’s. Syn¬ 
copation. Jerks.” Was life all striking tents and 
a trek from camp to camp? At any rate, if the 
latest jerk had landed her in a new camp, she 
wanted, before she was moved again, to survey her 
surroundings. She wanted a point of view and the 
difficulty was that she seemed never to stay long 
enough in one place to make up her mind about it. 

Things had a settled aspect once—that was in her 
father’s day—and again there had seemed fixity 
when she was a patriotic Englishwoman doing her 
bit in the great war; and both those points of view 
were as remote now as—she fished for a comparison 
and obligingly Mrs. Appleford pushed her Sunday 
paper under the door; that was it—as remote as the 
Victorian Sunday. The kaleidoscope rotated; it 
wouldn’t settle the pieces into a pattern. 

But the pieces were there, Susan and Michael, 

69 



70 


The Wrong Shadow 


surviving by exception from her last camp, the 
Ministry; Max; Bassett and Gladys; others to come, 
if she were to take seriously this fraternity of first 
nights which she was invited to join. She had a 
next morning chilliness to that idea. It was prom¬ 
ised to her that if she went to galleries on first nights 
she would crowd her canvas with fresh interesting 
figures. Really! Well, perhaps. But first she was 
going to examine the figures already on the canvas, 
coolly, skeptically, correcting her jejune habit of 
liking everybody. 

How, for instance, could she like Max when she 
remembered their meeting in the gymnasium and 
his declared object of breaking his leg? He was 
absurd. Yes, but what was that absurdity but an 
extension into melodrama of an attitude of her own 
towards Bassett’s which she had kept, in her case, 
on the plane of comedy? She, too, had felt revul¬ 
sion from the blatancy of health in the office, and 
she had stood up to Bassett for her right to have a 
headache. And everyone wasn’t—certainly he 
wasn’t—the serenely poised person she physically 
was. His antics on the rope! His failure to climb 
high enough to make his fall serious! So sinewless 
of body that he could not climb a rope—and she 
granted him, for that, the right to be sensitive to the 
point of perversity about the whole Bassett affair; 
on the ground that he wasn’t manly. 

That begged the question, though, and she came to 
this—could one like a man who was not manly? 
But, again, how did one gauge manliness in towns? 
In the country, men shot straight and rode straight 
and were visibly sporting. And if they weren’t 






Olga 


7 i 


. . . but, even if they weren’t, one sometimes liked 
them. She had liked a man called Sullivan in spite 
of the Colonel’s condemnation: “A loose fish: a 
writin’ feller.” It was very difficult. Why, she 
supposed that Bassett in a box with Miss Minniver 
was manly, was sporting. Words were perplexing: 
did some words show their bright sides in the coun¬ 
try and their dark reverse in town? The chorus 
from the revue came back to her, and she let it come 
remedially, as antidote to thought. She had the 
paper, too: another antidote, and both antidotes 
failed her because she was oppressed by the loneli¬ 
ness of her room. She had been stoical about lone¬ 
liness, but last night had changed all that and there 
was a new, keenly felt dreariness about the prospect 
of a Sunday spent in solitude. She would go to the 
Abbey. 

Then Susan Hammond was in the room, Susan in 
tweeds and boots and a floppy felt hat, Susan look¬ 
ing as if she hadn’t washed properly that morning 
and hadn’t combed the night out of her bobbed 
hair. 

“Michael’s below,” she said. “We missed the 
Oxted train at Victoria and we were going to have 
a row on the platform about whose fault it was, and 
then I thought of you. You’re near Victoria, you 
see.” 

Trains, thought Audrey, made Susan think of a 
huffier. “Yes, I’m near Victoria,” she said. 
“Flatterers address letters Victoria, S.W.” 

“Were you going anywhere? We thought we’d 
leave the Surrey hills alone this time—they’re an 
expensive Sunday, anyhow—and do the Putney to 





72 


The Wrong Shadow 


Richmond walk by Queensmere. Back to Kew, if 
we feel like it. Are you on!” 

Audrey was on. Claverton Street, as she glanced 
at it, looked sinister below a sulky sky. There was 
more than a hint of rain, but the walk tempted her 
for its own sake and it might, besides, result in some 
clarification of her ideas. 

She opened her wardrobe, displaying hats; not a 
multitude of hats; not hats whose name was either 
Legion or Louise; to be precise, three hats. “This 
one, I think, Susan,” she said. “It’s small and we 
may find wind on the Common. ’’ It was, in view of 
the likelihood of rain, reckless to wear that hat, but 
*‘If Pm a buffer,” she thought, “I’ll be a decora¬ 
tive one.” Susan, dressed trampishly for the Sur¬ 
rey lanes, would look bizarre on Richmond Terrace, 
and the buffer was not above the mischief of pre¬ 
senting Michael with a contrast. 

When they came out to him, Michael said “Thank 
you, Audrey,” with such intensity that she almost 
laughed in his face, but he had her sympathy. Why 
should Susan dress like something out of history, 
suffragettishly, in her aggressively workmanlike and 
walking-womanlike clothes which seemed designed 
at once to flout ordinary Sabbath conventions and to 
announce that she was sexless! Her remembered 
Susan of the Ministry hadn’t these mannerisms, and 
if they were a motley put on in defense against 
Michael’s wooing they weren’t, thus publicly 
paraded, fair to the poor man. 

Passing ‘ ‘ The Pines ’ ’ on Putney Hill, Audrey was 
vouchsafed a clue. Susan, a sturdy rogue amongst 
the summer crowd, strode ardently uphill, declaim- 




Olga 


73 


ing in a loud voice as she went impervious to 
stares— 

“0 people, 0 perfect nation, 

O England that shall be, 

How long till thou take station ? 

How long till thralls be free? 

How long till all thy soul be one with all thy sea ? ’ ’ 

She marched ahead, wrapt. Michael’s lips tight¬ 
ened as he looked at Audrey. “That’s it,” he said. 
“This labor business. Taking it seriously.” 

‘ 6 Dressing it seriously, ’ ’ said Audrey. i i Only not 
yesterday.” 

“Well, we were going out to Surrey. No. She 
. . . does do this on Sundays—I understand, in pro¬ 
test. I mean to say, Audrey, we all talk shop up to a 
point. It’s allowed. There’s a legend that we’re 
most interesting when we talk shop, but—” he 
hesitated. 

Audrey felt unindulgent towards Susan. “Like 
the snail that carries its house on its back, ’ ’ she sug¬ 
gested, “Susan carries her shop.” 

Up the hill Susan had halted and awaited them. 
“It’s understood,” said Michael hurriedly, “that 
Sunday customs are bourgeois banalities.” 

And Audrey: “But I thought they called it the 
Labor Movement. Hasn’t it moved beyond that? 
My snail was better than I knew.” 

“And me, Audrey? Susan and I?” 

“With me as matchmaker? Oh, I give you leave 
to flirt with me if that’s a way to help.” 

“If it leads nowhere,” he said admiringly, “it’s 
a rose-strewn way.” 




74 


The Wrong Shadow 


They reached Susan and i ‘ Audrey,’’ she said 
severely, “what are you doing with your life?” 

Michael groaned. “If you’d only dilute your 
conversation!’ ’ 

“I went to a revue last night. That’s dilution 
enough for a while. Well, Audrey?” 

It was a leading question. Audrey had spent six 
months in getting down towards the point of not 
knowing where her next meal was coming from. She 
hadn’t reached that point, but she had had an un¬ 
pleasantly close view of it. She hadn’t been free 
to look at other prospects, and it had not been how 
to use life that bothered her, but how to keep alive. 
Then came her job at Bassett’s and her attitude 
towards that was a question mark, both as to the job 
itself and as to the spare time it left her. “What 
are you doing with your life?” She had an idea 
that not many people could answer that question off¬ 
hand: certainly she (if she were to take it seriously) 
could not. But she did not take it seriously. 

“I believe my vocation is marriage, Susan,” she 
said with a nice air of earnestness. “Meantime— 
why, meantime is just meantime. A state of prepa¬ 
ration like Michael’s.” 

“Michael’s?” Susan cried so tartly that almost 
one might have diagnosed jealousy already. 

“Didn’t you say he’s preparing for his chartered 
accountant’s final? Marriage, my final. And then, 
like Michael when he’s passed, I begin to practice.” 

“Um,” said Susan. “But this meantime of 
yours, with your unhallowed job at Bassett’s” (Aud¬ 
rey was to gather that Susan’s own job in the Trade 





Olga 


75 


Union’s central offices was hallowed). “A job 
that’s as important as making smoked glasses to 
look through at eclipses of the sun.” 

“I’m getting my bearings at it,” Audrey assured 
her with more serenity than truth. 

“We turn down here by the Windmill,” said 
Michael, but he didn’t turn Susan from her purpose. 
She was silent till they were in the woods below the 
mere, then, “Listlessness!” she gave out as a text. 
“Listlessness. As though when the war was over, 
we were over too. As though because we’d done our 
bit we could lie down for the rest of our lives and 
be listless while a few strong people tread on us 
and make us all serfs in a servile state. Put it this 
way, Audrey—what are you looking for in life?” 

“Well . . . call it happiness.” 

“Then call it selfishness.” 

“ I do not call it selfishness, ’ ’ said Audrey. 11 Hap¬ 
piness is infectious. I don’t mind using bigger 
words if they’ll please you. Romance. Beauty.” 

“On—what’s your salary?” scoffed Susan. “Ro¬ 
mance on three pounds ten a week. ’ ’ 

“Only three pounds.” 

“You’re sweated. You’re on the poverty line. 
Don’t you see—?” 

“I see beauty,” said Audrey. “I see Richmond 
Park and I won’t talk economics here.” 

“And romance?” Susan persisted. “Will you 
tell me that anyone can have romance today unless 
he’s rich?” 

Audrey looked pointedly at Michael. “Oh, I 
don’t know,” she said. “I think it’s reachable.” 




76 


The Wrong Shadow 


Susan winced and Audrey, to show she wasn’t a 
complete pirate, said, 44 Tell me something about 
Max Peterkin.” 

44 You know him well, though, don’t you?” 

4 4 No. You found him in my room yesterday—” 

44 Why, yes.” Susan was not doubting anyone’s 
discretion, but she wondered. Almost viciously, she 
wondered. 

44 It was the second time I’d seen him. The 
first—” She told of Max in the gymnasium. 

4 4 Oh well, ’ ’ said Susan , 4 4 he writes plays. ” As an 
explanation of a desire to break a leg it seemed 
irrelevant. 44 And I expect he’d had another one 
refused that day. So he was morbid. ’ ’ 

Colonel Evelow on their once neighbor Sullivan 
came back to Audrey’s mind. 4 4 Loose fish: a writin ’ 
feller.” The Colonel had read books but he barred 
authors, just as he ate meat but barred butchers. 
But she had liked Sullivan for all that: and she in¬ 
clined to admit writing as valid excuse for eccen¬ 
tricity. At any rate, she had a welcome sidelight 
now on Max and she needn’t at this stage try to 
reach conclusions about him. Just now, her busi¬ 
ness was the temporary alliance with Michael and 
she must be loyal to it. 

44 Morbid? Indeed yes. Fantastically,” she dis¬ 
missed Max, and there was the implication that, 
disapproving Max, she approved Michael who was 
not fantastic. 

They walked through bracken to the pools: be¬ 
yond them up the hill towards Richmond Gate. 

Suddenly, 44 Michael,” said Susan, 44 Olga! We’ll 
go to Olga’s.” 





Olga 


77 


Audrey perceived that he found the suggestion, 
for some reason, embarrassing. Then, whoever Olga 
was, Audrey was with Michael in opposition to go¬ 
ing to see her and apart from Michael, purely for 
herself, she was in opposition. She had wanted new 
people in her life, but not in battalions, not all at 
once. “Who is Olga?” she asked. 

Somebody threatening, it was to be judged from 
Susan’s manner as she said, “You’ll see.” 

“But—” began Michael. 

Susan interrupted. “You haven’t objected to my 
seeing Olga,” she said. “If you’ve no objections 
on my account, you can hardly object on Audrey’s.” 

He could not object. He could not say “Olga is 
a proper person for you who are (I hope) my future 
wife to know, but she is not a proper person to whom 
to introduce my acquaintance, Audrey.” 

“Besides,” Susan clinched it, “it’s obviously go¬ 
ing to rain. ’ ’ She was unanswerable. 

II 

Susan in command rationed them drastically at a 
tea-shop lunch in Richmond. It was a late lunch, 
and their walk had whetted appetite, but, “We’re 
not millionaires,” she said, “and Olga feeds the hun¬ 
gry.” Then she led Audrey into that apartment 
whose presence in tea-shops is advertised in gold 
lettering on the windows (and well it may be gold, 
for are not that room and that elegant announce¬ 
ment of that room the very plinth of the tea-shop’s 
conquest of London?), and washed her face and 
combed her hair. “I was punctual at Victoria, if 




78 


The Wrong Shadow 


Michael wasn't,” she said by way of defiant apology 
for thoroughness of ablution now, and Audrey was 
to know, by these presents, the significance of Olga. 

It was raining (hadn't Susan predicted rain in a 
tone which was virtually an order to Providence?), 
but the 'buses passed the door and Audrey, who 
had expected that Olga was in Richmond, found they 
were to go back to town. A short quick walk from 
the 'bus took them through drizzle to a block of flats 
in Kensington. Susan expertly operated a self¬ 
acting lift. 

The room was white and gray, with soft carpeting 
and harsher hangings, and decorously painted 
chairs; it might have been explicitly, as it was im¬ 
plicitly, signed by Heal. But it was Olga whom 
Audrey saw rather than Olga's room or the people 
in it. 

She thought Olga absolutely beautiful—and she 
saw why Susan had brought them here. It was to 
remind Michael, if by chance he had been comparing 
Susan unfavorably with Audrey, of a woman who 
was to Audrey as the sun to the moon. Other 
women in Olga's presence dwindled to a common 
measure of insignificance. Beauty is dynamic, 
beauty of any kind—of a statue made, one knows, of 
stone, of a sonnet made, one knows, of words—is a 
motive force, giving, radio-active. Olga's beauty 
was dramatic—not theatrical, not of the stage. 
There is something too emphatic for ordinary life 
about your great stage beauty, for hers is beauty of 
the stage, an exaggeration one way or another of 
beauty off the stage. Olga was dramatic because 
she was the unexpected justification of optimism: 





Olga 


79 


one had hoped to find her, one hadn’t quite dared to 
believe in her and here, shaming doubt, she veri¬ 
tably was. 

She was in white with a pleated skirt and a low 
close-fitting jumper, without rings on her fingers, 
simply and most expensively turned out. Olga? 
Was she Russian? Perhaps her dark hair, parted 
in the middle and drawn back in braids enhanced 
the Russian suggestion of her name: but the Ballet 
had set that fashion and if her accent hinted at for¬ 
eignness at all it was certainly not at Russia but at a 
faint, unobtrusive English America. Yet Audrey 
wondered; set her in a room of English oak and 
would not her foreignness have been more appar¬ 
ent? She might have seemed, away from HeaPs 
modernism, his subdued but evident strangeness, 
herself exotic—and exotic was not the right word for 
an American. Perhaps, Audrey guessed, an Ameri¬ 
can of the Southern States, and it was beside the 
point to speculate about her at all. Olga was. Why 
worry who and what she was or how old she was? 
Nobody ever bothered about the age of Cleopatra. 

She greeted Susan and Michael, and: “Olga,” 
said Susan, “I’ve brought Audrey Evelow. She’s 
going to be a first-nighter. ’ 9 

“Ah,” said Olga, “then I shall see you often.” 

“You go to the gallery?” asked Audrey in amaze¬ 
ment. 

“Of course,” said Olga, almost as if a suggestion 
that she could go to any other part of a theater was 
insulting. It seemed to Audrey the most astonish¬ 
ing thing she had ever heard. This woman in a 
gallery! 




8o 


The Wrong Shadow 


And then she heard something which astonished 
her still more. The room was fairly full, but with 
their entrance conversation had naturally lulled. 
But a young man with large eyes and weak chin was 
talking confidentially to a large lady dressed from 
head to foot in scarlet. She was like an overblown 
peony, and he an immature lily, and in the silence 
his voice rose, perhaps intentionally. He said. “I 
sit every Tuesday and Friday night. I find it most 
absorbing. Just now I am in touch with someone on 
the other side who is telling me all about the life in 
Mars. The canals and . . . ” He was enthusias¬ 
tically fluent. 

Two surprises might cancel each other out. If 
Olga was interested in this sort of thing, it might 
explain also her frequenting the galleries: a passion 
or a taste for queer subjects and queer places. But 
it seemed she was not interested in life on Mars as 
communicated to the young man by a spirit who 
(astronomers might have been glad to hear) con¬ 
firmed the theory of the Martian canals. She said, 
“Oh, Mr. Howard, can you tell me what Silverdale 
IJniteds closed at yesterday?’’ 

He replied informedly and volunteered further 
statistics which she received so politely that he 
turned to the peony and said, “You see, Miss Arm- 
both, it comes to this. The date of Armageddon is 
1926; therefore the war was not Armageddon and 
we have a greater war to come. 1926 is irrefutably 
established by the Prophecies on the Pyramids 
which have never, never erred. ’ ’ And how did this 
link up with his private information about Mars? 
A mystery. 




8i 


Olga 


A mad world, my masters. Audrey decided that* 
madness against madness, she preferred the Peter- 
kin to the Howard brand. In any case, Howard did 
not matter—and even the peony had apparently 
reached that conclusion; she was talking about her 
pupils; it seemed she taught singing—and none of 
these people mattered except Olga. New people! 
New people! She was at the limit of her capacity 
for new people, and she could ignore them, vague 
shadows in a room full of Olga who was plying her 
with muffins. As Susan had said, Olga fed the hun¬ 
gry, chiefly, today, the well-dressed, well-lunched- 
looking hungry; but Susan in her shabby walking 
costume was not quite exceptional in Olga’s room. 
Plainly, she was miscellaneous in her collecting and, 
when collected by her, a miscellany did not mind 
being miscellaneous. 

Susan asked, “How’s Tony?” 

“Splendid, thanks,” Olga replied. “We’ll have 
him here presently.” 

A child? Olga’s child. Olga with a child! In¬ 
credible feat of maternity on the part of an Artemis! 

But “I’m afraid we can’t stay long today,” said 
Susan. She had finished a large, undrawing-room¬ 
like tea; now she was preparing to get up; and it 
looked, rather blatantly, like cause and effect. Per¬ 
haps Olga whose charity was wide would not have 
caviled at Susan’s dropping in frankly for a meal; 
but the cause of Susan’s preparations to go was, as 
a matter of fact, Michael. 

She brought him that she might administer Olga 
as corrective to any misguided enthusiasm he might 
have conceived for Audrey. And he sat cross- 





82 


The Wrong Shadow 


kneed on a hassock adoring Olga, who found it noth¬ 
ing embarrassing (nor would Venus of Milo) to be 
a cynosure. Let us not call his a rude stare; rather, 
an ingenuous gaze, impersonal, annoying Susan by 
its concentration. If he didn’t quite look at Olga as 
if she were a woman, he might have now and then 
interrupted his contemplation of a miracle in order 
to glance at Susan; and he did not interrupt it. She 
deemed it necessary to interrupt for him. “Mi¬ 
chael !” she said, and had (his leg being near her 
foot) to supplement the word with a kick, super¬ 
fluously forcible, before he turned his eyes. She 
rose, Audrey meekly with her, and left Michael to 
stumble to his senses and to get himself out of the 
room with what assurance he might. 

Outside, “Ah, the rain’s over. We’ll walk,” 
Susan announced, “Oh, look at this”—a shop-win¬ 
dow, the plain suggestion being that bygones were 
bygones and that it was nobody’s business to be 
retrospective about that closed episode, their call on 
Olga—. On Olga whom? That was it, and Au¬ 
drey was not to be so inhumanly incurious as not 
to ask. “Susan,” she said, “thank you. Your 
Olga is the loveliest creature alive. Olga. Olga 
who ? ’ ’ 

Susan looked grim, and Audrey suddenly remem¬ 
bered Michael’s hesitations when Susan had pro¬ 
posed the call. “She calls herself Mrs. Wyler,” 
said Susan. “You see, there’s the boy.” 

“Susan!” protested Michael. “We don’t know 
anything. ’ ’ 

“Nor does anybody else,” said Susan, “about her 
husband, if he was her husband. ’ ’ 




Olga 


83 


“She’s been heard to say he’s in Manchuria.” 

“Oh well,” said Susan. Manchuria, she meant, 
was as good a fiction as any other. 

The right occasion would have found her warmly 
for the defense, fanatical believer in Olga’s husband 
in Manchuria, but though she had used Olga for her 
own purposes today this was not an occasion for de¬ 
fending her. Michael’s offense was rank, and 
Susan’s sense of justice at its lowest ebb. “We’ll 
change the subject, please,” she said. “About to¬ 
night, Michael. Queen’s Hall, or St. Martin’s in the 
Fields?” She had her catholicity. 

“It’s a Wagner concert,” he said, as one who 
need say no more. 

Susan nodded. “Queen’s Hall, then.” The 
demi-god defeated God. “You’ll come, Audrey?” 

“I don’t think so, thanks. No. I’m going 
home.” She craved, of all things, for loneliness, 
her pendulum had swung too far these last twenty- 
four crowded hours and, surfeited, she longed for 
solitude. That foe looked friendly now, and “Per¬ 
petual motion,” she stigmatized the life, at least the 
week-end life, of Susan and Michael. Perhaps she 
would grow to it as she became acclimatized to com¬ 
radeship, but, as yet, she must be granted respite. 
She wanted a book in her hand and the tranquiliz- 
ing feel of print on eyes. Readers all know that 
feel, that comfort, after deprivation of it, of the sim¬ 
ple physical act of reading. 

And most of all she wanted to remember Olga, 
the way she sat, the rise and fall of her bosom, her 
arm bare above the elbow. Olga’s face. Olga’s 
hair. Olga’s complexion. Olga. 




8 4 


The Wrong Shadow 


m 

Susan to Audrey. She wrote “My Dear, you 
were witness to the last of my hesitations, you were 
sufferer by. the last of my hesitations. Oh, Audrey, 
I can’t keep that up. I meant to write a letter and 
I can’t when I’m feeling a paean. Michael and I. 
I said ‘Yes.’ I said it after the concert in Portland 
Place. It’s like being in harbor after storm, only 
angel sailors are singing chanties to heaven in the 
harbor and I’ve wiggly thrills up my back all the 
time. He kisses divinely.” 

Simply school-girlish. Love resisted is perhaps 
like influenza, the more prostrating in the end. Aud- 
drey wondered if she could count as a good deed for 
that Sunday (like a Boy Scout’s) the becoming hat 
she had elected to wear in spite of a threatening 
sky; the hat had suffered from the drizzle. She had 
another thought and hunted up the Sunday paper 
not yet removed from her room. She turned to the 
Queen’s Hall programme. Its final item was the 
Venusberg Tannhauser music, and she ceased to ex¬ 
tol her hat as accessory to romance in Portland 
Place. 




CHAPTER FIVE 


COMEDY OF THE CANTEEN 


I 



BOUT this time Frank Bassett had an inter- 


view with a Superior Person which caused him 
grave embarrassment, not because the interview was 
not in its odd way profoundly satisfying, but because 
its large result seemed inevitably to reopen the af¬ 
fair of Herbert Wyler. 

He had received from the Ministry of Munitions a 
check, in compensation for disturbance, which he 
considered he did not merit. He had profited by 
being disturbed and a lump sum now, and such a 
lump sum, went altogether beyond the contract he 
had made and beyond any claim he might have made 
for extra-contractual consideration on compassion¬ 
ate grounds. And he had made no such claim. 

He returned the check and it was sent back to him 
with a minute suggesting that he had returned it in 
error. The Ministry defended itself for six weeks 
against granting a personal interview to Mr. Bas¬ 
sett, but eventually a small girl in a brown overall 
ushered him into a room designed for the repose 
of the rich, still clinging obstinately, in spite of mis¬ 
use for years as an office, to the character of an 
opulent bedchamber. At a desk in the middle of 


85 


86 


The Wrong Shadow 


this room sat a Person with an egg-shaped head and 
singularly emaciated hands. He was bald and his 
face achieved the contradictory effects of being 
tight-skinned and wrinkled. He scrutinized a file, 
then looked with a weary tolerance at the importu¬ 
nate caller to whose closed accounts the file referred. 
“Mr. Bassett? Well?” 

“Humpty Dumpty,” thought Frank, “you’re in 
for a fall.” Aloud he said, “I wish to return this 
check.” 

“You have already done so. It has been sent back 
to you.” 

“That’s true,” said Frank, disappointed to find 
Humpty Dumpty so well informed and so little in¬ 
clined to fall even though Mr. Bassett wished to re¬ 
turn a check. 

“The assessment,” said Humpty, “is final as far 
as this Ministry is concerned. If you remain unsat¬ 
isfied, the Law Courts are open to you.” 

“But, you’re surely misunderstanding me, sir. I 
am refusing a check which I haven’t asked for and 
don’t want.” 

The Person referred to his file. “Mr. Bassett,” 
he said, “you have received the O.B.E. May I rec¬ 
ommend you to rest content with that honor?” The 
implication was that Mr. Bassett in refusing a check 
hoped to gain a knighthood and Humpty was a 
knight himself, jealous to preserve for his order 
what of exclusiveness remained to it. “I exceed 
my duty in volunteering that advice. My duty is to 
pass you this check.” 

“Suppose I burn it?” 

Humpty permitted himself a smile. “We have 





Comedy of the Canteen 87 


no jurisdiction over your recreations, Mr. Bassett. 
We are not in a position to prosecute you for 
arson.” He rose, to end tlie interview. “Come, 
sir. Bluntly, you’ve done well to come off with an 
O.B.E. There is nothing further to be had here. 
Fold up your check.” 

“My point,” Frank insisted, “is that it isn't my 
check. It’s been paid to me in error.” 

The file was tapped by an impatient finger. 
“Your opinion to that effect is recorded. I suggest 
to you that we are wasting time.” 

“Oh well, I’ve tried.” 

“You have tried,” said the cynic strong in his 
belief that he had to do with an honor-hunter who 
was ready to gratify a monstrous egotism at a mon¬ 
strous price. “Good day, Mr. Bassett.” 

After that, the only thing to do with the gift-horse 
was to stable it. Frank did not burn his check: he 
put £50,000 on deposit at his bank and the unlaid 
ghost of Herbert Wyler traveled with him to Walt¬ 
hamstow like a fly that buzzed and buzzed and 
buzzed. But £50,000 is a mighty satisfying sum. 

II 

He was beginning to acknowledge, late and even 
now with difficulty, that the wraith of Herbert Wyler 
wove itself into the fabric of his life. When Audrey 
from her high place saw him with Gladys in a box 
at the theater she suspected him, until she valued 
Gladys’s dress through an opera glass, of raffish¬ 
ness, and did Frank Bassett less than justice. He 
might have had his minor and disreputable adven- 






88 


The Wrong Shadow 


tures, but be wasn’t disreputable with bis own typ¬ 
ist. He took Gladys out because he was a lonely 
man and because she for her part was eager to be 
taken out by him. The proprieties went with them, 
not indeed those of Victoria, but all that was needed 
of propriety under George: propriety without 
antimacassars. 

He shouldn’t, this darling of commercial fortune, 
have been a lonely man, and neither should he, from 
temperament, have been a bachelor, and he was both. 
They held, in those places where the character of 
business men falls to be canvassed, that Bassett had 
a yellow streak; that he was a coward; that he would 
promise to look into schemes submitted to him as a 
capitalist; that he would look and would admit their 
soundness, and then would “get the wind up” and 
decline to be enterprising. 

What he had was not a yellow streak, but Wyler 
obscurely yet firmly vetoing any activity but that of 
the Tonic. Under duress and in the necessity of 
■war, the wraith of Wyler had consented to approve 
of money made out of the Ministry of Munitions in 
the Tonic Works, but there had been no risks about 
that and the schemes for the extension of his wealth 
proposed to Bassett were all, in varying degree, 
speculative. For form’s sake, he glanced at them, 
if only to find in their detail some reasonable excuse 
for drawing back, but it was for Wyler’s sake that 
he rejected them. The tyranny of the dead! It 
was monstrous. It kept him not only from money¬ 
making but from love-making. It would lie dormant 
for months, duping him into forgetfulness, and at 
some inconvenient moment would leap upon him. 




Comedy of the Canteen 89 


Once lie all but signed a deed of partnership with 
a man who saw rich profit in buying aeroplane linen 
wholesale from the Disposals Board and re-selling 
retail. He had the pen in hand. Abruptly, sun 
broke through a heavy cloud and shone brightly into 
their room. “An omen/’ said his colleague gayly, 
and then the smile froze on his lips. Bassett was 
staring at the sunlit floor and at the shadow on it. 

It was not his shadow. It was the shadow of a 
lanky man, high-nosed; the shadow of Herbert 
Wyler. 

“I can’t go on,” he stammered. “Ill. I’m very 
ill.” He swayed faintly in his chair. 

“There’s so little that you need go on to. Sign 
the deed and your check, old man. I’m the working 
partner. ’ ’ 

“No . . . No.” And the profits of that deal in 
linen, carried through by someone else, had been 
enormous. He had let his friend down, shamefully. 
Oh, no wonder he was lonely, the poltroon, the 
traitor: and that was how it always went. He grew 
careless of his beast in the jungle or hopeful that the 
beast no longer crouched, and then the beast sprang 
—his conscience, his morbid, imaginative conscience 
which, this time, had let him go to the very last mo¬ 
ment and then actually projected the shadow of 
Wyler on the floor. He was bound to the Tonic and 
to nothing but the Tonic; he was slave to a partner 
who was not sleeping but dead—dead and horribly 
alive. 

The windfall from the Ministry exacerbated the 
situation. Heaven knows, the British Public needed 
a Tonic in the years when they were hag-ridden by 




go 


The Wrong Shadow 


Versailles, but there were limits to their capacity 
for absorbing Leviathan: on the other hand, he 
needed money on the grand scale for his object of a 
healthy England, and the £50,000, used, multiplied, 
would put him well on his way towards the realiza¬ 
tion of his dream. But "Wyler stood in the way: 
Wyler said, in effect, ‘ ‘ Confine yourself to our Tonic 
or I haunt you horribly.’’ Wyler forbade fruitful¬ 
ness to £50,000 or, let us say, since the £50,000 was 
at low interest on deposit, that Wyler practiced 
birth-control upon it. A capable, implacable 
wraith! 

Bassett tried his own Tonic; motoring; Harro¬ 
gate (where the only weight he lost was fleshly); 
Monte Carlo (where the Eumenides directed the 
roulette balls and caused him to win thousands of 
francs which he did not want because of the steriliz¬ 
ing wraith, so that Monte Carlo only added to his 
useless incubus the burden of a hundred thousand 
francs on deposit wfith the Credit Lyonnais and the 
only satisfaction he got out of them was to watch 
exchange and to hope, maliciously, that the franc 
would drop to the insignificance of an Eastern Euro¬ 
pean currency and so fool Wyler after all); golf; 
massage; Harley Street (where he did not mention 
his connection with the Tonic) and taking Miss Min- 
niver to the Vaudeville Theater; and it was all of no 
avail; it hadn’t weeded Wyler out. The case was 
desperate. 

He decided to offer sacrifice to Wyler, and to sac¬ 
rifice something which it would hurt him to lose. If 
anything was most dear to Bassett it was his name, 
and perhaps what had come to be only less dear than 





Comedy of the Canteen 


9i 


his name was tlie Works Canteen: the beginning, in 
miniature, of his schemes, a starting-point almost 
infinitely disproportioned to the grandeur of his 
goal (as Palos Harbor is disproportioned to the 
American Continent), but the source of honest 
pride. 

Building and equipment had cost him £25,000, 
about three times their pre-war cost, and certainly 
when the reporters came to his opening ceremony he 
would not refrain from mentioning that impressive 
figure, but the Canteen did not stand, for him, as 
the visible sign of lavish philanthropic expenditure; 
it stood for an idea, an idea circumscribed today by 
Bassett’s whose employees were exclusive members 
of the Welfare Society centralized in the Canteen, 
but not to be circumscribed tomorrow, if Fate were 
kind to him, by anything smaller than the seas 
around the British Isles. 

The main hall had a good kitchen at one end, a 
platform with footlights and a removable cinema or 
lantern screen at the other end, and a floor well- 
made for dancing. You went from the hall into a 
corridor, with lavatories off it at each end; a bil¬ 
liard-room of three tables; a social room with a good 
newspaper service; a silence room which included 
the library and games room intended for the boys. 
The cellarage was partly for kitchen stores, partly 
for smoking-room and chess. At lectures or enter¬ 
tainments the hall would seat six hundred, and ex¬ 
perts (that is to say, some of Bassett’s girls who 
had been privileged to test it) declared the floor per¬ 
fect for dancing. 

Cynical sappers, furtive pests who would under- 









92 


The Wrong Shadow 


mine all and any manifestations of human kindness, 
had two main lines of attack. Labor, which pro¬ 
duced Bassett’s wealth, was given hack a moiety of 
it as a sop. That was one line; the other was that 
the Canteen was merely a cunning business move to 
advertise Bassett. But, ignoring the cynics and ig¬ 
noring Bassett ’s own opinion that this was no more 
than a preliminary experiment, the Canteen was a 
noteworthy achievement of which he had every right 
to be proud. 

Then, clearly, whep. he decided to sacrifice his Can¬ 
teen to Wyler, he made no ordinary offering. Let 
it be remembered that Bassett had a passion for his 
name and that from the first propounding of his 
patent medicine to Wyler the use of Bassett’s name 
alone in all business publicity had been an empha¬ 
sized condition. The Canteen was naturally to have 
been the “Bassett Canteen” and it was going, sacri- 
ficially, to be the “Wyler Canteen.” Surely that 
would propitiate the restless ghost! 

Wyler lay, perhaps unidentified, in a soldier’s 
grave: the Canteen was his memorial, his splendid 
mausoleum to placate an angry spirit. And the 
awkwardness resulting from the resuscitation of 
Wyler, the questions Bassett would be asked about 
his friend so signally commemorated—what were 
these but the martyrdom of Mr Bassett? Sacrifice, 
the abracadabra of the romantic! 

Lushly the name of Bassett flowered on the Works 
and about the Works. But the Works was but ac¬ 
cessory to the Canteen, as England’s industrial 
North is accessory to London. The Canteen, 
metropolis of Bassett’s, was crowned by a stone 




Comedy of the Canteen 


93 


facade engraved in great letters i ‘ The Wyler Can¬ 
teen. ’ ’ Above the door, a stone: ‘ ‘ This Canteen is 
erected to the memory of the Late Herbert Wyler”; 
in the great hall, in gold on mahogany, the same. 

The gymnasium in the Works building, though 
used for months, was to have had its formal open¬ 
ing on the same day as the Canteen. Reporters 
were to have inspected and described it. A great 
board, providing for the ultimate inscribing of the 
names of gymnasts who led in competitions, was to 
be installed and “The Bassett Gymnasium” was al¬ 
ready lettered at its head. He had those letters 
painted out; he omitted the gymnasium from the 
Press programme of his opening; he wished nothing 
to thwart the sole impressiveness, of the Wyletr 
Canteen and the newspaper canonization of the late 
Herbert Wyler. It was his final sacrifice. 

Ill 

A supper; a speech by the Donor; entertainers 
who were to sandwich Walthamstow between their 
turns in West End Music-halls; a dance—no one 
could deny to the opening night of the Wyler Can¬ 
teen the right to be called an occasion. The Press 
proclaimed it in advance. Cynicism related to the 
phrase “his master’s voice” and to the fact that 
Bassett was a large buyer of newspaper advertising 
space is to be avoided. The Press has, infallibly, a 
sense of proportion. It is a servant of the Public, 

Employees of Bassett’s thrilled with anticipation 
and ate no dinner; non-employees of Bassett’s 
thrilled with jealousy and some who were nobody’s 





94 


The Wrong Shadow 


employees ate no dinner either. Walthamstow's 
cinemas were in for a bad Saturday night because 
most of their patrons would be standing outside 
Bassett's watching the arrival and departure of au¬ 
thentic West End stars. It was a great occasion. 
Only Bassett knew how great the occasion truly 
was. It was the occasion for the laying of Wyler's 
ghost. 

He sat in the office with time to spare before Fos- 
dike would come to call him to the supper. But he 
was not wasting time. He was rehearsing his 
speech. 

“ ... I regard this Canteen as a home for a 
hero. You are the hero. You, the members of this 
Welfare Society which you founded and have car¬ 
ried on till now, under the heavy handicap of home¬ 
lessness! (Those aitches need watching). As the 
soul is greater than the body, so is the spirit of com¬ 
panionship, which is your contribution, greater than 
the bricks and mortar which are my contribution. I 
bring my contribution humbly. That is no figure of 
speech and no hypocrisy. I am humble because 
your Trustees have allowed me to dedicate this 
building to the memory of my friend the late Her¬ 
bert Wyler. This is the Wyler Canteen, and though 
necessarily the emotions that name evokes are mine 
and not yours, I ask you to think with reverence of 
his name. He was my friend ... I say no more of 
him. But let me add a few words about Welfare 
Societies in general. England is a society. Is it a 
Welfare Society, individually and collectively 
healthy? I use the word ‘health' with diffidence on 
this occasion. It sounds like our business hours. 









Comedy of the Canteen 


95 


Well, we do hold a brief for bodily health, but we do 
not assert that bodily health is the whole of health. 
Bodily health alone does not make an A-l nation. 
There is social health and mental health and . . . ” 

And so on to allusion, tactful he hoped, to the re¬ 
lations between employer and employed, the identity 
of their interests, which was undeniable where 
health was concerned and where else but with health 
was Bassett’s concerned! But the rehearsal suf¬ 
fered interruption. Fosdike knocked and entered, 
but not the Fosdike whose large and staid stupidity 
reminded one of something in stone from, for exam¬ 
ple, the Nineveh Gallery of the British Museum; a 
Fosdike ruffled, translated into new sculptural 
terms, a gargoyle of a Fosdike. 

Bassett did not wait to be told that something was 
seriously wrong. “Not fire!” he asked, beginning 
with the worst. 

Dolly Wainwright pushed aside the solid form 
which screened her. “No,” she said. “It’s me. 
If you please, sir, what’s going to be done about 
me!” 

She wore a Tam and a check blanket coat which 
she unbuttoned as they watched her. Beneath it, 
suitably to the occasion (assuming that she was one 
of Bassett’s employees) was a white dress, and Mr. 
Bassett, looking at it and at her, felt a glow of ten¬ 
derness for this artless child who had blundered into 
his room. Fosdike, the idiot, was agitated because 
she had chosen this evening to make some petition. 
She couldn’t have chosen better; it was specifically 
his night for attending to the welfare of his people. 
There was a pathos about this slight girl with her 




g6 


The Wrong Shadow 


fair hair and her freckled prettiness; something 
daintily virginal in her face appealed to him; he 
caught himself thinking that her white frock was 
more than a miracle in mercerized cotton—it was 
moonshine shot with alabaster; and the extreme im¬ 
probability of that combination had hardly struck 
him when Fosdike’s voice, hoarse with emotion, 
forced itself on his ear. “Tell Mr. Bassett what 
you’ve been telling me,” he said, and locked the 
door. 

Dolly watched him contemptuously. “Locking 
that door won’t help you,” she said. “I got my 
friends.” 

“My dear young lady,” said Bassett encourag¬ 
ingly, “surely you know I’m always ready to con¬ 
sider any legitimate grievance and—” 

“Legitimate?” she interrupted. “Well, mine’s 
not legitimate. So there! ’ ’ 

Her shrillness puzzled him. He looked at Fosdike, 
a Non-conformist conscience in a tragic pose, and 
there seemed little help in that. “I beg your par¬ 
don,” he said. “Come now” (the patriarchal 
manner), “don’t assume that I’m not going to listen 
to you. I am. Tonight there is no thought in my 
mind except the welfare of my people.” 

“Oh well,” she said apologetically, “I’m sorry if 
I riled you.” She nudged Fosdike with her elbow. 
“Tell him. Not going to make me say it all twice, 
are you?” 

Fosdike made a gesture, grandiose, despairing: 
but he said nothing. He implied that he was asked 
to speak the impossible. “You’d better tell me 
yourself,” Bassett suggested impatiently. 





Comedy of the Canteen 


97 


She inspected her toe. “It’s about Herbert Wy¬ 
ler,” she said. 

“Wyler!” he cried. 

‘ 4 Well, don’t jump down my throat,” said Dolly. 
“I don’t say I come here willing, but us poor girls 
have to look after ourselves.” 

4 ‘ You spoke of Herbert Wyler.” 

“Yes,” said Dolly. “He’s the father of my 
child. ’ ’ 

Mr. Fosdike groaned, though he had heard it al¬ 
ready. And Bassett had thought of virginity and 
alabaster! He was not thinking of them now. 

We are all balloons dancing our lives amongst 
pins, pins with large heads, cushioned heads but al¬ 
ways, even for those who live least dangerously, pins 
liable to be upturned to our undoing. Wyler was a 
pin, blunted by Time. It was long since Bassett 
had thought of him as still alive. On no precise evi¬ 
dence he had come to the conclusion that Wyler was 
dead, and now this girl upturned the pin, sharp¬ 
ened the pin and stood with unfathomable menace in 
the path of the balloon. Well, the balloon should 
not collapse prematurely; the balloon must dodge. 

“My friend Herbert Wyler,” he said, “is dead.” 

“I daresay,” said Dolly. “Now.” 

That was one, and a good one, for the balloon. 
He wasn’t conscious of insensibility in wishing 
Wyler dead and permanently dead. Wyler’s death 
was the status quo; it was too late to disturb it; and 
Dolly had not disturbed it. Whether her Wyler was 
or was not Bassett’s Wyler, he was dead and Bas¬ 
sett had, at most, to deal with his relict. Was this 
his W x yler? He tried again. “I may tell you,” he 





The Wrong Shadow 


98 


said, ‘ 4 that this is the first I’ve heard of Mr. Wyler’s 
being married.” 

Dolly tossed her head. “You ain’t heard it now, 
have you? I said it wasn’t legitimate.” 

Mr. Bassett sank into his chair. The thing was 
possible. All things were possible, but—“Are you 
employed in the Works here?” he asked. 

“I was here, on munitions,” she said, “and then 
on doles.” 

Ah, he had her now. Old Wyler would never have 
come to Walthamstow without calling on Bassett: it 
was inconceivable. In Walthamstow, the Bassett 
headquarters, the well-spring of the Bassett adver¬ 
tisements! “You met him,” he said casually, “in 
W althamstow ? ’ ’ 

“I didn’t then. It was at Eastbourne on my 
holidays. Sergeant, he was.” 

Possible, possible. “Describe him,” he said 
sharply. 

“Describe Erb?” she said. ’Erb! “Well, a tall 
man.” She glanced at Posdike. “Not overbig, 
like him, and not little like you.” Mr. Bassett 
winced. “In between like.” (But most men were 
in between the Fosdike and Bassett heights). She 
said shyly, and the shyness seemed superfluous, “He 
had a mole on his right calf” (and the only occasion 
when Bassett had seen the nude legs of his friend 
was when he and the Ruddles undressed him: a 
vehement occasion, not made for the observation of 
a mole). “And I’m bound to tell you,” said Dolly, 
“that he drank a lot. Oh and he was in a Canadian 
regiment, Princess Pat’s Own. London born, 
though. ’ ’ 




Comedy of the Canteen 


99 


The possible advanced into the probable. Drink 
and Canada combined to offer a good explanation of 
the authentic Wyler’s long indifference to the rise 
of Frank Bassett. Wyler hadn’t had the habit of 
drink, but he had been drunk when Bassett last saw 
him and remorse for his misconduct on that occasion 
might have driven him to further drink. He re¬ 
called Wyler’s enterprising, far-going holidays. 
The Isle of Man for a fortnight, France for a night. 
Canada seemed an overwhelming likelihood for a 
Wyler stimulated by shame to drastic action. 

Fosdike made a suggestion. * ‘ You ’ll have his 
photograph,” he said. 

“No. We didn’t have our photos taken,” and re¬ 
torting upon his look of incredulity, “you can’t do 
everything on short leave,” she said. 

“But—-but—” said Fosdike. “Oh!” His point, 
which he failed to express, was probably that they 
had misused time, even on short leave, less reputably 
than by being photographed, and Dolly must have 
had some comprehension of it, for she said, “Well, 
there was a war on, and you know how we felt about 
the soldiers. Look at me now. I’m twenty-two 
with a child to keep, and his father’s name up in 
gold lettering in that hall there. I say somebody 
ought to do something. All this fuss about ’Erb. I 
got to have my bit out of it.” 

Bassett looked up sharply. He had been piecing 
Wyler together in accordance with the evidence. 
He saw his friend drink-sodden, degraded, a derelict 
in Canada, living heaven knew how. Then the war, 
and Wyler’s great recovery—a man was not made a 
sergeant for nothing—and then leave and a lapse. 





100 


The Wrong Shadow 


He became sentimental about Wyler, weak, the crea¬ 
ture of bis vices once fairly started on the down¬ 
ward path, but when the call came proving his met¬ 
tle with the best of them. A sergeant in the Canad¬ 
ians, a man amongst men, tough in a tough crowd. 
Good old Wyler! 

Then he heard what the girl was saying and the 
possibility that she was humbugging came into his 
mind. Watching her, weighing her, he couldn’t be¬ 
lieve her capable of so audacious, so imaginative a 
bluff, and all she said of her Wyler was possible 
enough of his Wyler. If she had guessed, she had 
guessed so shrewdly that he couldn’t believe her to 
be guessing. But he said to Fosdike, “ Bring Miss 
Minniver,” not quite in order to set a thief to catch 
a thief, but a woman a woman. And he did not 
think in this emergency of sending for Miss Evelow; 
perhaps he judged that Miss Minniver had more of 
common clay with this girl than Audrey had, and 
wanted to confront like with like. Miss Minniver 
would take it as a high compliment to herself that 
she had been called in as consultant to this most con¬ 
fidential case, and Miss Minniver would be wrong. 
Fosdike went, and the girl went on, “Of course, if 
you’ll take steps according, I’m sure I have no wish 
to make a scene.” 

A scene, marring his opening ceremony! Not if 
he knew it; but though he could exclude her from 
the Canteen (where as one not in his employ she had 
no rights of entry), there was the awkward circum¬ 
stance of the crowd in the street waiting to welcome 
the West End Stars. They would welcome with 
hideous gusto the story of this girl “betrayed” by 



i f ( 




Comedy of the Canteen 


IOI 


Herbert Wyler. It was simple blackmail, of course, 
but, if sbe didn’t lie, her child was Wyler’s son. 
Legally she had no claim, beyond perhaps a few 
shillings a week, on Wyler’s estate, and legally there 
was no Wyler estate, but morally (did one use the 
word morally in this connection? Equitably then) 
Bassett acknowledged an obligation towards a son 
who derived, never mind how, from the inventor of 
his formula. 

“Though,” she pointed out, “it’s a lot to ask of 
anyone, you know. Giving up the certain chance of 
getting my photograph in the papers. I make a 
good picture too. Some do and some don’t, but I 
take well and when you know you’ve got the looks 
to carry off a scene, it’s asking something of me to 
give up the idea.” 

She’d thought it out, the minx. Dolly Wain- 
wright as the latest incarnation of his crouching 
beast in the jungle, and an attractive little beast 
too; but at this point a beast who miscalculated her 
spring. Her photograph in the papers? No: her 
little scene, if she made it to an audience of repor¬ 
ters, would never get into the papers. He was se¬ 
cure, at any rate, against that. “You said you 
didn’t wish to make a scene, I thought,” he said. 

“But poor girls have often got to do what they 
don’t wish to. I wouldn’t make a silly scene. Hys¬ 
terics and all that. Hysterics means cold water in 
your face and your dress messed up and no sym¬ 
pathy. But, with scenes, the greater the occasion, 
the greater the reward, and there’s no denying this 
is an occasion, is there? You’re making a big to-do 
about ’Erb and the reward would be according. If 






102 


The Wrong Shadow 


I made that scene it hid be to get my photograph in 
the papers where the film people could see it. IVe 
the right face for the pictures and my romantic his¬ 
tory will do the rest. I don’t say I’m anxious to do 
it on you hut I’ve a child to keep and I’m showing 
you what a big chance I shall miss if I oblige you. 
‘Herbert Wyler’s Canteen,’ I might say. ‘Yes, and 
what about Herbert Wyler’s son?’ I don’t say I 
shall say it, but I might.” 

“You appreciate the fact that this is blackmail?” 
he asked. 

“But I ain’t asked you for anything. And if I 
pass the remark now that three pounds a week is my 
idea of a minimum wage, it isn’t blackmail to state 
the fact. Three pounds is cutting it mild, too, when 
you think I was on munitions and got used to wang¬ 
ling income-tax on my wages and when you think 
about what I might make on the pictures, too. I 
mean to say, what might be compensation to some 
isn’t compensation to me. I’ve got my standard.” 

“So I notice, Miss—?” 

“Wainwright. Dolly Wainwright, and ought to 
be Wyler.” 

“Three pounds a week,” he said, reflectively. 

“Well,” said Dolly reasonably, “I didn’t depre¬ 
ciate the currency. Three pounds a week is little 
enough these times for a girl who fell from grace 
through a man with his name up in letters of gold on 
the Wyler Canteen.” 

Gladys Minniver came in with her re-assuring air 
of being the past-mistress of predicaments. Fos- 
dike, stammering and boggling at direct statement 
had nevertheless managed to sketch the situation for 





Comedy of the Canteen 103 


her. “A girl . . . says she’s the late Mr. Wyler’s 
. . . er . . . not wife . . . and there’s a son . . . 
deplorable. ’ ’ 

Gladys came at once to the point, or, at all events, 
to a point. ‘ ‘Where’s the baby?” she asked. 

“Lumme!” said Miss Wainwright, with a proper 
resentment. “Do you think I bring him out at 
night?” Her motherhood, she implied, might be 
unlicensed but it wasn’t lax. “He’s in bed, of 
course.” 

“ Oh ? And where’s the bed ? ’ ’ 

“At my sister’s in Brixton.” 

“You’re sure he’s not your sister’s baby?” 

“ Well! ” said Dolly indignantly. 6 ‘1 think I know 
my own. There! If that’s what you’re getting at. 
There!” She produced a birth certificate. She 
was suspected, was she?, of not having had a baby; 
she had the honest indignation with which high vir¬ 
tue resents a gross affront. 

Far in the black depths of the unfathomed ocean 
sightless monsters swim; sometimes a tentacle or a 
fin torn off in accident or combat rises to the upper 
waters, thence, once in a thousand chances, to be 
dredged to the surface by the apparatus of some 
marine zoologist. This much and this little do we 
know of those creatures of the unlighted seas: and 
as a zoologist might gaze in awed amazement at 
some fantastic evidence of that obscure and curious 
life, so did Frank Bassett wonder at the deep duplic¬ 
ity of women. 

Unjustly, maybe, we are all apprehensive of the 
detective; the criminal is the detective spelt back¬ 
wards and here was Bassett, who had been conscious 







104 


The Wrong Shadow 


of a mean feeling wlien he suspected Dolly, the 
mother, of an attempt to bluff him, staring at Gladys 
who suspected Dolly of an attempt to bluff without 
being a mother at all! He had sent for a woman 
to test a woman, but Gladys’s line of attack made 
him uncomfortable, as if some mischance that he 
didn’t care to tell her of had happened to her clothes. 
Strange, when Gladys was an honest woman and 
Dolly, by confession, was not! 

Gladys was reading the certificate. “The child 
has your name,” she said accusingly. 

“Of course.” 

The unscrupulous woman was actually trying to 
make capital against Dolly out of that injustice of 
Justice which makes the mother sole parent of her 
illegitimate child! “Well,” she grudged, return¬ 
ing the paper, “but you have letters from him.” 

“No.” 

“You didn’t take his address? You didn’t write 
about the baby?” 

“I didn’t take his address,” and in reply to 
Gladys’s unbelieving air, “Did I expect a baby?” 
she asked. 

Gladys opened her mouth to speak, then revised 
her first intention and kept silence. 

A dreadful thought came into Bassett’s mind. 
“But if you didn’t write,” he said, “if you hadn’t 
his address and he hadn’t yours,” Dolly nodded, 
“then how did you hear of his death?” 

“Why,” Dolly said, “isn’t it on the stone outside 
the Canteen? ‘The Late Herbert Wyler?’ ” 

“That,” he said, horrified, “is the first you heard 
of it?” 




Comedy of the Canteen 105 


She nodded, “Yes.” 

Then, good heavens, as far as any of them knew, 
this Herbert Wyler, this gallant of Eastbourne, was 
not dead at all! He might be alive, he might turn 
up, he might walk into the Canteen dedicated to his 
memory. And in what condition? Those detri¬ 
mentals whom the war had reclaimed either by 
patriotism or discipline—where were they now? 
Some of them breasted peace as staunchly as they 
had breasted war; but more of them relapsed. 

Fosdike returned to the office. “Supper is quite 
ready, sir, ’ ’ he announced. Guests who had omitted 
to eat dinner were hungry. 

Dolly took a step forward. She wished to call 
attention to herself and to a matter which Mr. 
Bassett appeared to be neglecting. “Well?” she 
said. 

He looked at her sourly. Three pounds a week, 
not a crushing charge upon him; but he disliked the 
thought of paying hush-money. He disliked being 
rushed. For the son of the authentic Wyler he was 
prepared to accept responsibilities which would cost 
him much more than three pounds a week; for Wyler 
himself, if he was alive—but he could establish noth¬ 
ing. The Canadian Records Office was his one hope, 
and the Records would be in Canada. He supposed 
in Montreal, and Montreal was a long way off, while 
the gathering outside his gates to which she threat¬ 
ened to appeal, was very near. 

There was no escape. She had him. “Very well, 
Miss Wainwright,” he said, and sitting at his desk 
wrote an undertaking to pay her three pounds a 
week. 





io6 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Pm glad iPs been done friendly/’ said Dolly 
Wain wright. 

“And I hope,” he said not so much magnani¬ 
mously as with a view to keeping an eye upon her, 
“that you will be one of our party in the Canteen 
now. ’ 9 

“Oh, may I?” she said happily. “Lucky I put 
this dress on.” 

“By the way, why did you!” 

* 1 And me expecting to be photographed! ’ 1 

“Ah, yes,” he said dryly. “Will you come this 
way?” His note caressed the birth certificate. 
Both were pillowed by her bosom. 

“And what about the baby while you’re indulging 
yourself?” asked Miss Minniver jealously. 

“I mentioned my sister,” said Dolly curtly. 

IV 

Such were the events which preluded Mr. Bas¬ 
setts inaugural speech at the opening of the Wyler 
Canteen, damaging to an oratory which was not 
meant as advocacy but as the sincere expression of 
a creed. Dolly was a disaster, but Bassett (he him¬ 
self has said it) had gumption and the delivery of 
his speech, unaltered from its rehearsed version, be¬ 
trayed no uneasiness. 

He had a good Press, a surprisingly good Press 
even after allowing for the effects of his special 
standing with newspapers. Reporters coming, per¬ 
haps, as skeptics went away, certainly, as enthusi¬ 
asts. Grant that they were fed and entertained, 
grant that the Canteen building with its considered 




Comedy of the Canteen 107 


architecture and equipment could hardly fail to be 
admired, they were yet unexpected in their dealing 
with his speech. They were full and cordial where 
they might have been elliptical and cold. They took 
him, not as a stunt advertiser, but seriously. They 
paid tribute to sincerity. 

There was, however, an exception and Bassett, 
though deploring his weakness, was considerably 
annoyed by one amongst the cuttings sent him by 
his industrious and trustworthy Press Cutting 
Agency. That is the worst of industrious and trust¬ 
worthy Press Cutting Agencies. They are not 
selective. Others than Bassett have wished they 
were. 

From The Bolshevik: “We need hardly point out that 
with State medical, nursing and pharmaceutical services, 
giving free attendance, nursing and drugs, such abomina¬ 
tions as patent medicines will disappear. The demand for 
nostrums is created to-day out of the necessities of the poor. 
Ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-paid, the poor become bodily ill, if 
they are not actually born ill. Incapable of paying the fees 
demanded by the rich man’s 'doctor, and distrustful of the 
treatment vouchsafed by the poor man’s or ‘ Panel’ doctor, 
the poor fall easy victims (and who, except the Doctoring 
Interest can blame them?) to the insinuating advertise¬ 
ments of quacks. A drowning man snatches at a straw; so 
we, who live drowning, snatch desperately at the hope of 
health held out to us by patent medicine propagandists. 
Immense sums are squandered on the competitive advertis¬ 
ing of rubbish. It is all waste, pure waste. 

“But mark the good which cometh out of evil, mark, in 
especial, Mr. Francis Bassett, a Communist malgre lui . 
The bad Mr. Bassett ‘owns’ Leviathan Tonic; the good Mr. 
Bassett builds a Works Canteen, he tells us in a speech at 




io8 


The Wrong Shadow 


the opening of this Canteen that a Works Welfare Society 
is the model for an All-England Welfare Society. Very 
well, Mr. Bassett, give ns our Communist England and we 
don’t care about the name. We will be, with pleasure, the 
Welfare Society of Great Britain. 

‘‘Well do we know why Bassett builds a Canteen. Well 
do we know what crimes of exploitation of the workers are 
cloaked by the ‘Philanthropy’ of employers. We know 
their bread and circuses and the Canteens by which they 
hope to win the gratitude of slaves. We are not so com¬ 
placent, Mr. Bassett. We know and we abhor the spirit in 
which you have built that Canteen. But you have built in 
brick: and brick endures. 

“That is why, in this meanwhile till Communism comes, 
we approve the Canteen ‘movement.’ They are building 
better than they know. Have the Workers so many meet¬ 
ing-places that they can refuse more ? No: let every 
Works management in the country erect a Works Canteen. 
By constitution, ‘Welfare Societies’ are under the direction 
of the Workers. Capital stands officially aside and says, 
‘Manage your own recreations in this Canteen. See how 
we trust you. ’ They can trust us to see that Capital stands 
actually as well as officially aside from the Canteens. They 
can trust us to use these buildings wisely as centers of Com¬ 
munist activity. We say to our fellow Communists, ‘Cap¬ 
ture the Canteens’ and to Capital we say, ‘By all means, 
continue to erect buildings for Communist Clubs. ’ Faites 
vos jeux, messieurs les Bourgeois! But it is heads we win 
and tails you lose. Advance, the Canteen Movement! ’ ’ 

Bassett was not alarmed by the possibility of the 
Canteen’s being captured by Communists, for there 
was no such possibility. Capital was to stand aside, 
was it? But not while nature abhors a vacuum and 
certainly not while Frank Bassett was president of 






Comedy of the Canteen 109 


the Welfare Society, in an office which he meant to 
he no sinecure. No: it wasn’t the wild suggestion 
of using his Works Canteen as a Communist hot-hed 
that annoyed him; it was the calm linking together 
of his All-England Welfare Society ideal with the 
subversive and infamous doctrines of Communism. 
It disturbed him, that impudent Communists’ claim 
that all good was their good. 

He twisted the scrap of paper angrily and noticed 
as he threw it (not uncertainly, as Wyler once had 
thrown) into the fire that the article was signed with 
the letters M.P. 44 Member of Parliament,” he ex¬ 
tended them. ‘ ‘ Prospectively, my Communist. Oh, 
so very prospectively,” he scoffed, and felt much 
better. After all, what was one ironist amongst so 
many eulogists, and one derisory circulation against 
certified net sales by the hundred thousand? He 
purred contentedly over his pile of cuttings. 

Audrey dancing with Max Peterkin on the delec¬ 
table surface of the Canteen floor had said, “ Bas¬ 
sett’s or no, you’re enjoying yourself tonight.” 

“I’m dancing,” he said and quoted Omar to a 
syncopated lilt. 

“ ‘Come fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring 
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: 

The Bird of Time has but a little way 
To flutter—and the Bird is on the Wing.’ 

“Carpa diem , too. All that sort of thing. Yes, I 
am enjoying myself tonight, hut I shall enjoy myself 
tomorrow, too. Tomorrow I shall bite the hand that 
feeds me.” 




CHAPTER SIX 


THE INCREASING PETERKIN 

I 

T HE trials of tlie well-intentioned and the stuff 
of agnosticism that they are! Sad sagas point¬ 
ing not to hope and joy and faith but to the Slough 
of Despond! When the bad man meets his doom, he 
has the satisfaction of having earned it, the comfort 
of Job, perhaps,—that he suffers with good reason. 
Inly he knows himself a fit and proper offering to the 
sacred Majesty of Justice. 

But where, except with God, is the balm for those 
unfortunates whose trials have no sort of reasonable¬ 
ness, and seem but a wilful jibe flung in the face of 
Justice? 

Except with God. 

Well, then, the Master of the Celestial Bakeries, 
preparing a batch of manna, took cognizance of the 
case of Frank Bassett. This man’s faith in the vir¬ 
tue of sacrifice, they seemed to say up there, shall 
not be utterly upset. But for his soul’s sake, he 
had five weeks of tribulation before the manna came 
to justify his faith. 

It is certain that he thanked heaven devoutly and 
thanked heaven’s instrument, the Canadian Records 

Office, very fervently when he received their final 

110 


The Increasing Peterkin hi 


letter. He had cabled for information as to the 
death, if he was dead, or as to the whereabouts, if 
he was alive, of Sergeant Herbert Wyler. He made 
himself responsible for all expenses of research and 
of reply cables. In a week, he cabled again and re¬ 
ceived the reply: “No record Sergeant Wyler found. 
Searching further.” 

Then silence and, at last, the letter. He dictated 
to Gladys a message commanding the instant atten¬ 
tion at his office of his pensioner, Miss Wainwright; 
he sent the messenger for her in a taxi and he sent 
Audrey to his printers to press for the delivery of 
some posters. He was in no hurry for the posters, 
but the printers were at Harrow and he wanted 
Audrey out of the way. Fosdike and Miss Mipniver, 
witnesses to his putting-down by Dolly, were to be 
witnesses to his setting-up; they and they alone. 

When she cajne, “Now, Miss Wainwright,” he 
said, rubbing his hands together beneath a grim 
smile. 

She was alarmed but—armed. “If you’re trying 
to do it on m^,” she said, “my brother’s a solicitor’s 
clerk and he’s had that paper stamped. That’s law. ’ ’ 

“You think you live in Brixton. You don’t. You 
live in a glasshouse. Don’t throw stones, my girl. 
Nobody’s going to throw stones at you and your 
precious piece of paper isn’t going to be contested. 
It could be, but it shan’t.” 

“Could it?” she gallantly defied him. 

“Ah,” he said. “I see. The useful brother. The 
solicitor who employs him is—?” 

Sulkily, frightened, she told him. Mr. Ted Wain¬ 
wright’s employer was assured on the telephone that 





112 


The Wrong Shadow 


Mr. Bassett knew nothing to the detriment of his 
clerk, hut that the clerk’s presence at Bassett’s in 
Walthamstow was a matter of such urgent im¬ 
portance that Mr. Bassett ventured to hope, etc. 
Amenities the most polite resulted in the addition to 
the party of Dolly’s legal adviser. By herself in a 
waiting-room, Dolly had not awaited his arrival 
quite dry-eyed. Who would that found security the 
mask of a chimera? 

Nor did she find her Ted a heart of oak; rather he 
showed apprehension meet to a young limb of the 
law who, if he hadn’t fished forbidden waters him¬ 
self, had stood by the poacher while she held tlje rod. 
’And any difficulties Bassett may have anticipated 
from this young man were ended by Bassett’s first 
sentence. 

“I will mention the word ‘blackmail,’ ” he said, 
and as Ted Wainwright flushed, “not aggressively,” 
he went on. “Not pervasively. Merely as a word 
conveying an idea which it will be well for us to have 
at the back of our minds during this conversation. 
In a minor key, blackmail. And the key tumable 
in a lock. Now let us put this word, this idea, into 
the background. We don’t forget it, but it does not 
obtrude.” 

Dolly looked at Ted for help. Ted looked at the 
floor. There was no help in him. 

“Now,” he said, “I have here evidence to prove 
that Miss Wainwright deceived me.” 

“I never!” Dolly protested. 

“Never,” he took her up, “knowingly. You did 
not knowingly deceive me, or my course of action 
would have been other than it is. You know very 





The Increasing Peter kin 113 


well the position into which yon forced me five weeks 
ago. It was not a dignified position, but you chose 
your time cleverly and I accepted the position. Her¬ 
bert Wyler’s is an honored name; that Canteen 
commemorates him. You came with your tale of a 
Herbert Wyler who was disreputable—” 

“Well,” said Holly, “he was a sergeant,” and 
she seemed by that to be countering the charge of 
disreputability. 

“You mean he might have been a private?” he 
guessed. 

“He mightn’t, then. I got my pride.” 

“You told me,” he went on, declining to argue the 
word “disreputable,” “of a Herbert Wyler who was 
. . . er . . . the father of your child.” 

“That’s right,” she said. 

“No, Miss Wainwright, it is not right and I will 
tell you why in a moment. You told me of this man 
whose names, Christian and surname, were the same 
as those of my friend. You threatened to tell other 
people of him, the suggestion being that they were 
the same man and that Mj\ Wyler, whose name is on 
the Canteen, was identical with your soldier . . . 
er . . . friend. That would have caused scandal. 
It would have reflected on Mr. Wyler and it would 
have reflected on me. I was honoring a man whose 
conduct was not honorable. And the more fool me. 
That was in your mind—that people would confuse 
the two Wylers and that I would pay to have the 
existence of your Wyler concealed.” 

41 1 didn’t know there were two of them, though, ’ ’ 
said Dolly; which was true. It was true not only of 
Dolly, but of Bassett who had been ready to believe 





The Wrong Shadow 


114 


that Wyler of the formula and Dolly’s sergeant were 
in fact the same. 

“And the curious thing,” he said, taking up the 
letter from Canada, “is that so far as you are con¬ 
cerned there never was a Wyler at all.” 

“Oh, come!” said Ted. 

“Never at all, Mr. Wainwright,” Bassett em¬ 
phasized. “I have no need to stop your sister from 
telling this tale because she has no tale to tell.” 

“The birth certificate,” said Miss Minniver glee¬ 
fully, “was a forgery?” 

“Nothing of the kind,” said Bassett. 

“ So I’d think, ’ ’ said Dolly angrily. 6 ‘ Shall I bring 
the baby here?” 

“That is not necessary,” said Bassett. “You 
have a baby, but its father . . . well, here’s the 
letter.” He read it. “From officer in charge Can¬ 
adian Becords. I have the honor to append informa¬ 
tion available in reply to your enquiry. Delay was 
caused by your reference to Sergeant Herbert Wyler, 
which I took to be the rank last held. As cabled 
you, no Sergeant Herbert Wyler appears in the rec¬ 
ords. I hereby confirm that cabled information.” 
Mr. Bassett looked at Dolly. 

“Well,” she said tearfully, “he was a sergeant. 
It’s cruel to say he wasn’t. It’s telling me I don’t 
respect myself.” She was, she implied, of non¬ 
commissioned officer’s rank in beauty; the attentions 
of mere private soldiers were for girls of minor at¬ 
tractiveness. A sergeant was her due and she hadn’t 
taken less than her due. 

“Wait,” said Bassett, and went on reading. “It 


** • 


~ T*- 




The Increasing Peter kin 115 


has just occurred to me that your enquiry may relate 
to Captain Herbert Wyler, M.C., who is in fact the 
only Wyler on our records. On looking him up, I 
find that for a short time in 1916, before proceeding 
overseas from Canada, this officer was ranked as a 
sergeant. I regret that I cannot inform you where 
he now is. He was demobilized in England. For 
your private information I will add that it is believed, 
unofficially, that Captain Wyler is an American who 
crossed the Border and enlisted in the British Forces 
before America came into the war. He would, for 
enlistment, declare himself British.’’ Mr. Bassett 
looked up w T ith a smile. “That clears the air, I 
think. I have read you the whole of the letter. 
What do you make of it!” 

“But he wasn’t an officer,” said Dolly. “I 
wouldn’t have dared.” 

“He wasn’t Herbert Wyler,” said Bassett. 

“But—” Dolly began. 

“Oh, cheese it,” said Ted with a sour look at his 
sister. “Can’t you seel He was Sergeant anything 
gallivanting in a false name. Pinched his officer’s 
name. They’d pinch anything in the army.” 

“He was a very good-looking man,” said Dolly 
in defense of both of them. 

Rather cruelly Ted said, “An unknown warrior,” 
then remembering the word Bassett had asked them 
to keep in the back of their minds, “Oh,” he said 
bleakly. “ Oh! ” 

“Exactly, Mr. Wainwright, exactly,” said Bassett. 
“And whom,” went on the romantic gentleman, 
“would you define as the victim in all this?” 




n6 


The Wrong Shadow 


“You,” said Gladys quickly. 

“Little ’Erb,” said Dolly. 

“Perhaps both of us,” said Bassett, denying, with 
considerable justice to that modern young woman, 
the right of Miss Wainwright to be called a victim, 
“and victims should stand together. That is why 
I continue the allowance till the boy is eighteen. 
Let him have a chance. When he is eighteen, I hope 
to find him a place here.” A thank-offering for his 
relief? A supplementary sacrifice to Mr. Wyler, 
the so indirect cause of the dilemma now happily 
resolved? Or, less subtly, simple generosity in 
the case of a war-baby individualized for him 
from the many who remained a matter, only, of 
statistics ? 

“Well I must say—” Outraged virtue sought 
utterance through the lips of Miss Minniver. 

“You needn’t,” he cut her short. 

Ted Wainwright requested the honor of shaking 
Mr. Bassett’s hand, and, that ceremony completed, 
was ushered with his sister to the door. 

Bassett chose a long cigar from the box kept for 
the entertainment of his best wholesale customers. 
“Usually,” he said, “I have to take a milder one 
myself.” Shorter, he meant, not milder. He was 
a small man always conscious of his height, objecting 
to look, with a long cigar in his mouth, like a sema¬ 
phore with extended arm. But he felt careless now. 
He felt jaunty. Sergeant Herbert Wyler never ex¬ 
isted and Captain Herbert Wyler, who existed, was 
an American. 

The status quo ante Dolly lacked complete satis¬ 
factoriness, but it was solidly restored. 




The Increasing Peterkin 117 


II 

Like life or love, a business cannot stagnate, it 
advances or recedes, but after the excitement at¬ 
tendant upon the opening of the Canteen, routine 
seemed to fall upon the office like gentle rain upon 
tbe plain beneath. The directive brain of Mr. Bas¬ 
sett was, no doubt, active enough—and the proprie¬ 
torship of an established patent medicine releases a 
man from the need of exacting mental activity—but, 
for Audrey, the letters she typed on Tuesday were 
monotonously like those of Monday and the senti¬ 
ment grew upon her that in office hours she was a 
machine. She didn’t aspire, even generally, to in¬ 
itiative and certainly she had no ambition to gain a 
place of responsibility in the business of marketing 
a Tonic. She hadn’t Max’s intolerance of the Works 
—she wondered how he could remain there, hating 
as he did—, but neither was she interested in them. 
Bassett himself seemed, in the office, a part of the 
machine and, as for herself, she was, like most peo¬ 
ple, dully earning a living. The routine had, indeed, 
not been without its break, but that wasn’t an ex¬ 
ception to which Audrey could look back with satis¬ 
faction. She preferred not to look back at it at all; 
it was a scarifying exception. 

Bassett, merely to keep her from contact with the 
Wainwright affair, had sent her on something like a 
fool’s errand to his printers at Harrow. Are there 
no telephones ? And Audrey took quite seriously her 
instructions to hustle the printers for the delivery 
of some posters. 




n8 


j 


The Wrong Shadow 


The printer was mystifyingly technical, but it ap¬ 
peared that the posters would soon be ready and he 
offered to show her a “pull.” Audrey nodded 
wisely. 

When it came, “But,” she said gasping, “that 
can’t be right. Surely?” She was asked to point 
out the error. ‘ * The whole thing , 9 9 she said, and they 
brought her the original design. They protested they 
had modified nothing. 

“No,” she agreed, but oughtn’t they to have done? 
At any rate, “Please don’t go on with this until you 
hear from us,” she said. “I’m sure there’s some 
mistake.” She thought the poster horribly vulgar. 

When she got back, Mr. Bassett was still in the 
mood of amiability resulting from the exorcism of 
a bogey, and he hadn’t finished his long cigar. A 
mellowed jauntiness possessed him now; a gracious 
clemency. And these things were fortunate for 
Audrey. 

“ I’ve been to Harrow, Mr. Bassett. I stopped that 
poster.” 

“Stopped it? My impression is that I told you to 
hurry it, not to delay it.” 

“I know. But . . . this is what they showed me.” 
She unfolded the “pull.” 

Bassett examined it, and saw no reason for her 
action. “Yes,” he said. “Yes? Why did you stop 
it? If you care to know, I passed that pull yester¬ 
day.” 

“Passed it!” cried Audrey. “But, Mr. Bassett, 
it’s too awful.” 

“What’s the matter with it? Advertising a tonic 
isn’t done by filigree.” 





The Increasing Peter kin ng 


“But this—” she began. 

“Also, Miss Evelow, it’s fair to warn you of 
something. I design my posters myself.” 

“Oh, dear!” said Audrey. “Oh, dear.” 

Mr. Bassett reached for the telephone and told the 
printer to proceed while Audrey sat very quickly 
at her typewriter and offered thanks to heaven that 
Miss Minniver had gone out to lunch. She shared 
Max Peterkin’s views on the business of Bassett’s 
just then. 

Audrey heard no more about that poster, but that 
was because Mr. Bassett took extremely good care 
that she should hear no more. 

Hoardings, they say, are the poor man’s picture 
gallery, and perhaps that is why it is nobody’s busi¬ 
ness to bother about the quality of the pictures. But, 
by exception, the London Electric Bailways have 
definite ideas about posters. Producing good post¬ 
ers themselves, they are the cause of good posters 
in others because they won’t have too bad posters 
in the Tubes. 

Mr. Bassett might rage and Mr. Bassett did rage 
when he found his new poster censured by the Un¬ 
derground. Wasn’t he a connoisseur of poster art? 
Wasn’t he a subsidizer of the Underground? They 
told him, coldly, that his poster was in their opinion 
unsuited to public exhibition; and they had nothing 
more to say, and he said, angrily, that he would cover 
London with it. 

But for Audrey, it is probable that he would have 
carried out his threat. There was nothing to stop 
him from doing above ground what he was not al¬ 
lowed to do below; but he remembered Audrey. He 





120 


The Wrong Shadow 


remembered ber either as Audrey or as a woman of 
taste who had been horrified by his poster. It may 
have been personal or as impersonal as the method, 
said to be practiced in the offices of cheap comic 
papers, of trying the joke upon the office-boy. In 
any case, he thought twice about it and had the good 
sense to cancel the whole issue. “And that girl,” 
he thought, “she knew! She saw it when I didn’t.” 
He was staggered by her perspicacity. It wasn’t 
that kind of vulgarity which is only perceived by 
those whose minds are vulgar enough to perceive it. 

Audrey had seen it, but he did not tell her what 
she had seen and there were no more breaks in the 
routine of her office life. Audrey accepted the snub, 
grateful, indeed, that her snatch at initiative had no 
more consequences for her than flat day after flat 
day in the office, uninterruptedly the same. 

She did not arraign civilization on that account, 
but dull office hours seemed to put upon her, as a 
moral onus, the duty to make her hours out of the 
office as little dull as possible and now that bread 
and butter came without great effort and without 
anxiety, she felt the sting of Susan’s urgent question, 
“What are you doing with your life?” An inquis¬ 
itorial question, too. A Roundhead of a question, 
asked of a daughter of the Cavaliers. The definite 
aim, the definable objective! She couldn’t answer 
the question while straight lines are harsh and 
curves are pleasant . . . but even curves end some¬ 
where; she didn’t want to walk in a circle. 

But, then, the galleries. She was going to them 
now and she was feeling herself at home in them. 
If there was not quite a philosophy, but a point of 




The Increasing Peter kin 121 


view, amongst the people she met, it was that all the 
excitement and the splendor of life didn’t belong to 
the large and wonderful things of the world. Were 
they little people, pinchbeck people, because, being 
poor on the whole, they challenged the limitations 
of poverty? 

She thought them happy people and vivid people. 
In their rich variety they had the quality of making 
her feel colorless. She had, as few of them had, an 
enthusiasm for herself, for the fitness, that is, of 
her body, but that was an intimate enthusiasm, not 
easily communicable, whereas they all seemed to have 
enthusiasms about which they could talk volubly— 
plays, as their rallying-point, painting, music, polb 
tics. She didn’t know how many planes there were 
on which one could live, but all of them seemed to be 
united in the first night galleries. And yet if any 
manifestation more than another of our London life 
might seem to justify the jibe that we take our pleas¬ 
ures sadly it is the theater queue, as of funeral 
mutes, addressed by a succession of buskers whose 
methods of appealing for charity amount almost to 
robbery with violence. But first nights! First 
nights! And, any nights, the Companionship of the 
Camp-Chair. 

Audrey, detained a while at Walthamstow and 
having to get tea on her way, arrived one night 
latish at a theater and found herself by Olga in the 
queue. She could never decide whether it was Olga’s 
clothes that were distinguished or Olga who dis¬ 
tinguished her clothes. Her soft browns to-night, 
the cloak that, surely, would have looked quite un¬ 
remarkable on a model in an Onslow Street window 




122 


The Wrong Shadow 


and that, on Olga, looked exceptional; it was all— 
and that was precisely it. It was the all. It was the 
harmony of detail. Olga knew how to dress and she 
couldn’t forget her knowledge even when she dressed, 
deliberately, for the gallery. 

“Oh,” said Audrey, “yqu’re late as well.” 

Olga glanced at the queue ahead of them. “But 
unless you’re a front-row maniac,” she said, 
“there’s never any need to come very early. Of 
course it’s always good fun.” 

“I was kept back to-night. Then I’d.tea to get.” 

“You know, I’m a terrible fraud. I’ve dined, 
early, but I’ve dined.” Dinner as a social demarca¬ 
tion. “But”—salute to gallery democracy!—“I 
don’t think there’s a soul here would hate me for 
it.” 

“I’m sure,” said Audrey. 

“My trouble,” said Olga, who seemed to need a 
confidante, “is that it may all be coming to an end 
soon for me. My husband’s coming home, and I 
don’t think he’d understand Bohemia with the lit- 
tlest b. Bohemia that couldn’t say *Ba’ to a 
goose. But ... I don’t know. I’d hate to give 
it up.” 

Two men, Jews, who had joined the queue behind 
them had turned from discussing Orpen to arguing 
earnestly a technical point of boxing. They drew 
illustration from the boxing contests at the Hoxton 
Baths. 

Olga listened, then , i i That’s it, ’ ’ she said. * 1 They 
care! They care about everything. They even care 
about theaters. Thank God for eagerness.” 





The Increasing Peter kin 123 


“Pm hopelessly a looker-on/’ mourned Audrey. 

‘ 4 Why hopelessly ? What is there for most of us 
but looking on ? Let ’s choose the right things to look 
at and we help.’ 9 

A policeman closed their ranks and brought them 
nearer to where Susan in her high-pitched voice 
asserted shrilly, “Labor will win the next elec¬ 
tion.” 

They heard Max in reply, “A rabble. Leader¬ 
less.” 

“We’ve the Intelligenzia. ” 

“It’s dregs .’ 9 

“Well, of course, there’s you,” she taunted hotly. 

“I?” he said. “I’m given to writing plays. I’m 
apt to think myself an artist. Artists are of the 
flunkey class.” 

An outraged squeal from Susan. 

“Democratic art’s a contradiction in terms,” he 
asserted. “Art goes with aristocracy.” 

“Then that’s why it’s gone. You don’t believe 
this, Max.” 

“Oh, half of me’s a rebel,” he admitted. “I re¬ 
volt against the job by which I earn my bread and 
I’ve slopped over into expressing the revolt in print 
in papers that I know all the time don’t matter a 
damn.” 

“They matter enormously,” she said. 

“Not to me, except as a safety-valve. I need 
them for that because sentimentally I’m agin’ the 
Government. Sentimentally, I’m anarchist, com¬ 
munist, anything that’s radical and red: but prac¬ 
tically I write plays and I know which side the bread 





124 


The Wrong Shadow 


of art is buttered. Practically, Pm a King and 
Constitution man.” 

“You sycophantic double-dealer,” Susan squealed 
and they were to guess after that that somebody 
(presumably Michael) suppressed her; the duet, a 
little too personal even for this audience, was heard 
no more. 

“Have you read any of that boy’s plays!” asked 
Olga. 

Audrey said “No.” He had not mentioned them 
to her, and she thought he might have let her share a 
knowledge of them which seemed by no means hidden. 
Had Olga not been Olga, had Audrey’s attitude not 
been one, almost, of heroine-worship, she would have 
been jealous to hear her say, “From those I’ve read, 
he’s on the way to doing something. ’ ’ 

Then Max, at any rate, wasn’t looking-on. Oh, 
she agreed with Olga about it all, that it was good, 
this seething. Endeavor might be jumbled, indis¬ 
criminate, but in half a hundred ways they were up 
to something, these young people, and, she was grate¬ 
ful to discover, she didn’t like them all equally. The 
Chelsea girl who painted,—was that a reason why 
she shouldn’t wash! And was Audrey prudish be¬ 
cause she disapproved the one or two cases of girls 
who were quite openly “with” men! One such 
couple, she knew to be Russians, another pair Eng¬ 
lish, unobtrusively but not furtively together, and 
she didn’t moralize about it but took her opportunity 
to draw distinctions about the people of her world. 
Something was lacking in her till she could dislike, 
and she found it good to know that she didn’t like 
everybody. 





The Increasing Peterkin 125 


III 

After the play that night, Audrey found Max at 
her elbow. “Do you feel like walking across the 
Park to Victoria?” he asked. 

“I hadn’t thought of it,” she said without en¬ 
thusiasm. 

She knew enough of him by now to be sure that 
he had intended no rudeness when, after the Vaude¬ 
ville revue, he took a flying leap to a ’bus and left 
her to reach her own ’bus alone. The minor gal¬ 
lantries were not in vogue and she preferred them 
absent; but there remained an obstinate resentment 
of that abrupt abandonment. She recalled his saying 
then that it was a long way to his rooms in Wal¬ 
thamstow and asked, “Is Walthamstow nearer than 
it was?” 

“No. But I am nearer to you.” 

“Oh!” 

“You used to have a garden, Audrey. You didn’t 
dig up the shoots you planted to see if they were 
growing. We’ve not dug up our shoot, but will you 
tell me that it hasn’t grown?” 

Yes, he had grown for her, from that bad begin¬ 
ning of the impulsive self-maiming lunatic in the 
gymnasium, into something like an understandable 
creature of a man. He had improved on acquaint¬ 
ance, and the bits of him she had, so to speak, col¬ 
lected, composed themselves in a character vivacious 
rather than volatile and likeable rather than ob¬ 
jectionable. She felt a good deal older than he was, 
but a man was either definitely old (say forty) or 




126 


The Wrong Shadow 


else lie was younger than a woman however young 
she was. She had nothing against Max for seeming 
young, and her point against this forward movement 
and this possessive capture of her arm which accom¬ 
panied it was, simply, that it broke new ground. 

“Well,” she said, “I know more of my friend 
than I did.” She stressed that “friend” signifi¬ 
cantly. 

V 

“Oh, yes,” he smiled, “all that. But leaving 
naivete out—” 

“Naivete!” she cried. 

“ ‘I should love, sir, to inspire frenzy in the 
breast of the male,’ ” he quoted. 

She said, ‘ 4 That was in the play.’ ’ 

And he, “Well, don’t deprecate plays to a play¬ 
wright. ’ ’ 

“Anyhow,” she said, “we’re not in 4 Quality 
Street.’ ” 

“Aren’t we, though?” He still had her arm, and 
made her stand where they were, at the foot of the 
Duke of York’s steps. The Mall was at their feet, 
and darkness mercifully shrouded the shanties in 
which war departments refused to die in St. James’ 
Park. “Show me the street of the world that has 
the quality of this.” 

“I only know Paris,” she said, “but—” 

“But what we’re really talking about isn’t archi¬ 
tecture. It’s love. And look here, Audrey, some of 
us are frightfully afraid of not being modem. Mod¬ 
ern novels begin with marriage. Modern love be¬ 
gins after the divorce court. You don’t get squarely 
into love except by crooked ways. Like flying. Fly 






The Increasing Peter kin 127 


low and it’s risky. High flying’s pretty safe. You 
don’t believe all that, do your’ 

“Of love? No.” 

“I said we’d leave naivete out. Let’s leave it out. 
I mean the naivete of pretending that you and I 
aren’t, well, you and I. But we can keep simplicity 
in. We needn’t pretend, either, that love isn’t love 
unless it’s got frayed edges, unless the pair of us 
have been through a lot of complicated experiences 
first.” 

His way, she supposed, of prefacing a declaration 
intended to be serious. But were they, in his sense, 
“You and I,” isolated by love for love? Was he 
her “You” as she, it seemed, was his? It didn’t 
jump to her that he was. 

“Of course,” he was running on, “if it’s a case 
for confession, I’m a lavish amorist. I’ve an ap¬ 
palling list of loves. I’ve made love to Miriam and 
Deirdre and Carlotta and Rachel and Zrenab. I’ve 
made love in Devonshire and Birmingham and Ispa¬ 
han and Spain. I’ve mentioned I write plays. I’ve 
loved the heroines of all of them. They were vir¬ 
tuous heroines which may be why nobody accepted 
the plays. But you can take it seriously, Audrey, 
that if my hair is red, my record’s white.” And 
then, when she was wondering how best to reprove 
him for assuming in her a state which, she thought, 
did not exist, “Of course, you don’t love me,” he 
said. 

“I haven’t thought anything about it.” 

“No, and that’s just the stage I hope you’re going 
to reach, the stage of not refusing to think about it. 








128 


The Wrong Shadow 


If there is something there on your side—I’m not 
asking you to say if there is—don’t let it die of mal¬ 
nutrition. I Ve an idea' that a lot of love gets starved 
out of existence, simply because people won’t nour¬ 
ish it by-thinking about it. Take this little fellow 
of ours—though you’re not sure that it is our little 
fellow, and you can’t be sure because, really, he’s 
hardly big enough to be seen yet by either of us— 
I want you to give him a chance to grow. You ’re not 
going to say, are you, that it can’t be lo.ve because 
it hasn’t leaped to full stature in an instant? Oh, 
some men, I daresay, can touch a spring at once that 
sets a full-grown love affair going from the first mo¬ 
ment the lady sees them. Some men—but not red- 
haired men who wear eyeglasses, and are such plu¬ 
perfect fools in a gymnasium that they can’t even 
climb a rope, eh, Audrey?” 

“Oh, Max,” she said, “you did look a fool.” 

“And that’s a very comforting statement,” he 
said. “Its past tense implies that my time for look¬ 
ing a fool in your eyes is over.” 

“You’re welcome to that satisfaction,” she said. 
“One doesn’t love a man merely because he doesn’t 
look foolish.” 

“But, on the other hand, when one is in love with 
an Adonis one is never sure if one is in love with 
love or with a man,” he suggested. 

“Then you have the very great advantage,” she 
said, ‘ ‘ of not being an Adonis. ’ ’ 

“Certainly,” said Max cheerfully. “It’s hit or 
miss with me. And I’ve got you going, Audrey. 
I’ve got you thinking about me. God knows what 
time I’ll get to Walthamstow.” 




The Increasing Peter kin 129 


They had, and Audrey had not been conscious- of 
it, reached Victoria, but she was conscious, as he 
jumped to a ’bus for the first stage of hjs journey, 
that her arm was cold. A lonely, unprotected, disen¬ 
tangled arm, feeling (in a minor way) as half of 
some Siamese twin’s might feel after a separating 
operation. Audrey was on top of her ’bus and a 
chilly wind met her from the river. “That’s all it 
is,” she thought. “Chilly on the ’bus after walk- 
ing.” 

But “I should love, sir, to inspire frenzy in the 
breast of the male.” It seemed she had inspired 
something (and, at leisure, she was going to examine 
its nature very carefully), but for the moment it was 
enough to know that she had inspired. She loved to 
have inspired. 


IV 

When she sat at her tabje next day in the office 
she found a letter from him. “You’ve slept,” he 
wrote. “You’re calm and balanced and you’ve 
slept.” She had, certainly, slept. Why not? She 
read: “The frenzy’s- mine. But will you under¬ 
stand this? Will you think me making use of you? 
Audrey, I’m not using you, but you fill me and I 
overflow. You haven’t launched a thousand ships-^- 
that’s not the way things go with me—but, oh, my 
dear, if I can write your play t Yours as it came to 
me last night, ‘better than dreams, dawn-lit,’ by 
you. You give, and I shall take, making God knows 
how poor a thing of this your splendid gift. Is that 
degrading passion to the confines of a play? Not 





130 The Wrong Shadow 


if you’ll grant you brim in me, not if you’ll see my 
passion’s need to overflow. I envy painters their 
directness. Were I painter, identifiably you’d shine 
your beauty to the world. But the disabilities of 
playwrights, writing raw words to be uttered— 
how? Chance knows. I can only weave you in the 
pattern of my words, I can only make a frame for 
you and that it’s you at all I can’t cry to the world, 
I can only tell you as a secret that’s between our¬ 
selves. I tell it now in selfish pride. This woman, 
in a play that’s going to be, is you. You’d not be¬ 
lieve it afterwards, she’ll fall so short of you, so 
miserably short. Audrey’s the star to which my 
wagon’s hitched. I shan’t be worthy of my star.” 
He signed, abruptly, “Max.” 

She felt the curious eyes of Gladys Minniver upon 
her, she heard Gladys ask with oily solicitousness, 
“Have you got bad news, dear?” and Andrey said 
“No, no,” and fled to privacy. Fortunately, Mr. 
Bassett had not arrived. 

Had she been making exhibition of herself? She 
looked into the mirror and the mirror reminded her 
of things more urgent than the opinion of Miss 
Minniver. “I’m not!” she said. “I’m not beauti¬ 
ful. Oh, but he thinks so.” She tried to be cool and 
rational about it. A young man, who wrote plays, 
was putting her into a play. That was all it 
amounted to; she was an artist’s model and perhaps 
she was not even that. He was writing a play and 
appeared to live in the condition of writing a play. 
Then he had had models before, and she was only the 
latest of them. Those heroines of his whom he had 
named last night, hadn’t they had living originals? 




The Increasing Peter kin 131 


Either they had, or else he didn’t use models as a 
painter did and in that case his letter was a piece of 
rather nice blague. There was another heroine, per¬ 
haps a charming one, about to be added to his gal¬ 
lery and he said she was Audrey, safeguarding him¬ 
self by saying, also, that she would not recognizably 
be Audrey. She whittled at her letter till she left 
nothing in it, except the fact that he had troubled 
to write it. “There’s that,” she concluded aloud. 
‘ ‘ He wrote to keep me thinking of him. But it means 
nothing. ’ ’ 

And she did not believe her own conclusion. 
There was a phrase in the Marriage Service, and she 
blushed to think herself thinking of that service, 
“With my body I thee worship.” It was as if Max 
had re-written the phrase to suit a man whose first 
preoccupation was not with his body, “With my play 
I thee worship.” 

He laid no siege to her and Audrey was inclined 
to ask, “When is a wooing not a wooing?” and to 
reply, “When it is Max Peterkin’s.” Time went on 
and the only hint he gave of awareness that she 
might reasonably expect a little less detachment was 
to say, one day, “It’s a four-act play, this time. 
Did I make that clear?” Four acts of worship? And 
she was to be Griselda, was she ? while he worshiped 
and, like an engineer who harnesses the tide, poured 
all the strength of his passion for her into—four 
acts of a play! It seemed to Audrey lacking in red 
blood. It seemed the shadow of a passion. 

She did him less than justice. Max wasn’t framed 
on the grand scale, and his daily bread was earned at 
Bassett’s at the price of continual nervous strain. 




132 


The Wrong Shadow 


He served Mammon, and he served his art and he 
hadn’t the physical expansiveness to serve Eros as 
well. He didn’t put Audrey aside; he didn’t say: 
“ A woman’s only a woman but I’m in my workshop 
now,” because the idea of Audrey was the familiar 
of his workshop, and that idea towered high above 
the conventional trivialities of courtship. He wore 
her favor at the tilting ground, but while her knight 
was in the lists, he couldn’t quit the tourney to kiss 
her hand. His play absorbed him, and it was her 
play and when it was done he would have earned the 
right to love and to make love. Meanwhile, they 
trod the Milky Way together and gathered dreams 
as cobwebs in their hair. Wasn’t that good enough 
even for Audrey? He repudiated the literalness of 
women, he flouted the thought that his high Audrey 
would have preferred the touch of his hand, or at 
least the assurance that he knew the color of her 
eyes, to the knowledge that they two collected star¬ 
dust in the night. He did not tell her how they wan¬ 
dered in romance, he took it that she knew, that she 
did not need to be told. Hadn’t he written that it 
was her play? In an ecstasy he worked upon her 
play. 






CHAPTER SEVEN 


MR. BASSETT PRESUMES 

I 

W TTfflLE Max worked and Audrey wondered or 
* ▼ forgot to wonder because she was in the gym¬ 
nasium, the second quickening of what shall be called, 
for once, the Wyler complex was preparing, and 
this time Audrey was to be involved as she had not 
been involved in the smaller affair of the Canteen 
and the Canteen’s corollary, Miss Dolly Wainwright. 

A mood of complacency—the mood of the long 
cigar—possessed Frank Bassett. He felt that he 
had come through, that he was safe, that Fate had 
done her worst and had been foiled. In the future 
he could harden his heart and stop his ears to any 
obscure murmurings of conscience. It couldn’t be 
said, generally, that conscience was in vogue and it 
couldn’t be said, individually, that he hadn’t sacri¬ 
ficed. His weekly check .to Dolly was a small but 
regular reminder of the greatness of his sacrifice and 
of a peril into which the sacrifice had brought him. 
Oh, he had won through; securely he could indulge 
the sentiment of victory. 

With some men the reactions of emancipation find 
expression in terms of Heidsieck, combined with suit¬ 
able assistance in drinking it. Mr. Bassett had other 

133 


I 34 


The Wrong Shadow 


views. Champagne and cocottes impair business 
efficiency, almost worse, they impair the surface 
lacquer of a healthy face, and remarkably, for a 
gentleman celebrating the shedding of an incubus, 
it was the word marriage which was at the back of 
Mr. Bassett’s mind. Not, as he had said to the 
Wainwrights of another word, not aggressively, but 
gently he gave lodgment in his thoughts to the idea 
of marriage. The dead hand of Herbert Wyler no 
longer held him in an icy vice; he was free to marry 
and the increasing popularity of Leviathan Tonic 
served to remind him that the property had no heir 
—a somber thought. Bassett’s, after his death, in 
alien hands! No: he hadn’t been spared the doom of 
his generation, and he hadn’t laid his ghost to come to 
a bachelor’s end. But he needn’t unduly hurry. He 
was thirty-four, which is not the precipitate marry¬ 
ing age; he was neither young enough nor old enough 
for furious marrying and thanks to the kindly con¬ 
trol of the Ministry of Munitions he evaded the 
harsh control of the Excess Profits Duty, so that 
he was in the fortunate position of knowing exactly 
how rich he was. He wasn’t rich less an unknown 
liability for E.P.D.; he was rich, quand meme. Se¬ 
lectiveness in marriage was thrust upon him. 

Obviously—too obviously—there was Gladys Min- 
niver. He could crook a finger, and it was too easy. 
On general principles, without considering more 
closely the lady’s accomplishments, the things which 
came to one easily in life were not those best worth 
having. He was rich without having struggled 
titanically to be rich. But the Tonic’s share of his 
fortune had not, he held, come easily and as for 






Mr. Bassett Presumes 


135 


his war-wealtli, by-product of their crimes and their 
mistakes in the Chancellories of Europe, he must 
be cynical about that. It was the only thing to be. 
And a wife was a serious matter. He ruled out 
Gladys Minniver, he took a service flat off Hanover 
Square, and the two decisions were inter-related. 
He was not to marry easily nor to live easily and 
Mr. Bassett expected to find life in the West End 
very uneasy indeed. There are social strongholds 
which do not surrender to a Bassett of the myriad 
hoardings. Not that he would aspire impossibly, 
but his pass-books were mettlesome if he wasn’t. 

It has been said that he was not a much befriended 
man. Those schemes they brought to him, and he 
pretended to examine them, Wyler-driven, rejected, 
generated unpopularity; he preferred, did he?, the 
lonely furrow. Then let him plow it; socially his 
circle was the circle of his own business and it was 
not clear when he dined a man or when a man dined 
him whether the reason was that they liked each 
other or hoped only to put a gloss upon an act of 
salesmanship. But he could count a friend or two 
and the friends w T ere fathers or brothers of ladies 
he had met at their tables. He hadn’t isolated any 
lady from the rest, but his attitude then had been 
defensive and now he was definitely looking about 
him. A man with a good car and the means to put 
up at any South Coast hotel needn’t fear that he 
would lack opportunity to meet marriageable ladies. 
He must get about, he must take week-ends off; see 
and be seen, generally, as he put it, come out of the 
shell. 

Gregory Winlatter, for instance, Sir Gregory as 






136 


The Wrong Shadow 


lie was now. He bought a lot of raw drugs from 
Winlatter and he’d not been invited to Winlatter’s 
house since the baronetcy had been conferred. He 
remembered Sir Gregory’s daughters as pleasant 
people, but he couldn’t name them, he couldn’t have 
said how their hair wa§ colored and doubted if he 
would know them in the street, unless by chance he 
met them all out together. There was one, though, 
surely there was one . . . promising, he thought. 
Worth looking into. He telephoned Sir Gregory and 
bought largely from him with a cheerful alacrity to 
pay the first price asked; then enquired of the baro¬ 
net’s family. “In Scotland,” said Sir Gregory. 
“Stranding me in town.” 

“But couldn’t we dg something about that to¬ 
gether!” asked Bassett. “This week-end, for in¬ 
stance. Suppose we lunch on Saturday!” Decid¬ 
edly he must see—Ethel, he was sure that was the 
name—Ethel Winlatter again; he must cultivate 
Sir Gregory to the tune, if necessary, of a week-end 
at Eastbourne. He warned his chauffeur of the pos¬ 
sibility. 

II 

“Why of course you’ll come,” Olga had persisted, 
and Audrey protesting this and that and that she 
wasn’t free had finally consented. 

“But need it be there!” she asked. “The Grand 
Western!” 

“Yes, it need,” said Olga, and when Audrey tried 
to s]3eak of clothes, “Clothes!” she cried. “Don’t 
you know yet that some women h&ve to dress and 
that you needn’t! You’re you, Audrey.” 





Mr. Bassett Presumes 


137 


It was sweetly put: but Audrey didn’t go without 
a qualm into the illustrious restaurant which Olga 
had insisted was positively the only place for their 
lunch together. Once, on her birthday, Colonel Eve- 
low had brought her here, but that was long ago, 
before she was a clerk at Bassett’s. She accepted 
herself as a clerk now and she never felt more clerk- 
ish and insignificant than when she followed Olga 
to a table suffering a hundred eyes that bored into 
her back. Yet she had gone proudly into the same 
restaurant with her father and, if it came to that, in 
the same fur coat, too; and the coat did not adver¬ 
tise its age. But she felt better sitting. 

They were at an end table, where Olga with her 
back to the wall had a view of the room, and where 
Audrey with her back to the room had a view of Olga. 
It was, as Olga said, all wrong, but Audrey preferred 
to be seen as little as possible. ‘ 4 Don’t make it hard 
for me,” said Olga, to do, she meant, this sort of 
thing without patronage and it didn’t help her that 
Audrey played, at the beginning, the poor friend who 
asserts unworthiness of the treat she is given. 

“Oh, dear,” said Audrey, and abandoned shyness. 

“That’s better,” Olga thanked her. “And be¬ 
fore the cocktails, too. After all, they don’t mean 
this place to be oppressive.” She took up the menu. 
“Well, let’s see about our liver and bacon,” and she 
translated liver and bacon into French which began 
with huitres and ended with souffle and didn’t sound 
much like Audrey’s recollection of the French for 
liver and bacon. “The thing is,” she apologized 
for a long order, “we’re both young, and as I’ve 
told you before, my husband’s looming.” 




138 


The Wrong Shadow 


i ‘ Olga! This . . . this isn’t—?” 

“To celebrate my exodus? Oh, no. At least, not 
that I know of. Fact is, I don’t know where the 
blessed man is. He’s somewhere vaguely on the way. 
Cheer up, Audrey. I’m not retiring into matrimony 
yet. Pass the cayenne.” 

They absorbed oysters to soft music, and, indeed, 
Audrey granted that the Grand Western was not 
oppressive—when you were seated, safely, with your 
back to it and had got used to the carpet in which 
you sank till its pile caressed your ankles. It was a 
hemisphere distant from Walthamstow where two 
hours ago she had put her Saturday three pound- 
notes in her case, but wasn’t it precisely her point, 
when not at Walthamstow, to be a long, long way 
from Walthamstow? The very linen of the waiter’s 
shirt—did they, even when they dressed at Walth¬ 
amstow, when the heads of departments put on even¬ 
ing clothes for an occasion such as the opening of a 
canteen, did they use fine linen such as his? She 
doubted it. This filtered light, this suave service, 
this room, these people, this lunch! She looked 
gratefully at the magician, Olga. Then, “What is 
it?” she asked. 

6 ‘ Oh! ’ ’ said Olga with a shrug. ‘ ‘ Just a man with 
a ten-ton stare.” She dismissed him. 

In fact, the stare of Mr. Bassett, too fascinated to 
be aware that he was rude: not the first man to be 
spell-bound by Olga. Olga kept her coat on, not 
because she was cold, but because Audrey, who 
doubted the orthodoxy in this place of her jumper, 
kept hers on; and sables suited Olga. But their 





Mr. Bassett Presumes 


139 


effect on Mr. Bassett was not confined to the aestheti- 
cal. 

It is to be feared that Sir Gregory Winlatter had 
a disappointing lunch. His host began brightly and 
ended by being the dullest of absent-minded dogs 
and Sir Gregory wondered what faux pas he had 
made to turn Bassett from animation to inertness. 
Gone to limbo was Bassett’s intention of following 
a buoyant lunch with the gay proposal that they 
should run down to Eastbourne for the week-end, 
gone his intention of giving Sir Gregory no alterna¬ 
tive but to invite him where he could renew acquaint¬ 
ance with Ethel Winlatter. Much he cared for 
Ethel Winlatter now, .much he cared for good in¬ 
tentions ! 

That point has, regrettably, to be made, the point 
that in Mr. Bassett lurked enough of the dour old 
Puritan to make him beauty’s recusant. To him, 
Olga’s beauty was dramatic and therefore it was 
diabolic; it was radiant and therefore it was not 
sublime. She could not—commonsense cried out 
that she could not—with that extraordinary beauty 
be an ordinary respectable woman. And the sables 
reinforced his view. Her companion had her back to 
him and he could not see the companion’s face, but 
he saw her coat and her hat and saw that they were 
not distinguished. Of course not. She chose to come 
out with a foil. 

And he desired her. He desired her with an in¬ 
tensity which made him oblivious of Sir Gregory 
and of the Bassett Dynasty which was to be founded, 
perhaps, with the cooperation of Sir Gregory’s 





140 


The Wrong Shadow 


daughter. He desired ambitiously, but be bad tbe 
assurance of bis pass-books that ambition did not 
outrage reason, and bis ungenerous sentiment to¬ 
wards Sir Gregory was that bis guest was a super¬ 
fluous infliction which prevented him from calling 
tbe head waiter and from making discreet inquiries 
about the lady of the sables. He put tbe word mar¬ 
riage, temporarily, on tbe retired list. 

Something would have to be done about this and 
be didn’t know what. He could haunt tbe Grand 
Western, but that \vas to assume that she was a fre¬ 
quenter, and all tbe time Sir Gregory was prosing 
on about Key Industries. They interested him, as 
a drug maker, and, usually, they interested Mr. 
Bassett. He enunciated platitudes which kept Sir 
Gregory going. Then Olga called her waiter and 
Mr. Bassett bad a great moment. If be haunted tbe 
Grand Western it was nearly positive that be would 
see her there! She did not pay her bill, she initialed 
it. She was an habituee, with an account (and did 
tbe idiot think that “those ladies” ate on credit at 
the impeccable Grand Western?)- So great was his 
relief that he vouchsafed Sir Gregory some atten¬ 
tion, and made an almost fatal lapse from concen¬ 
tration on the main chance. He looked at Sir Greg¬ 
ory, he gave Key Industries some intelligent criti¬ 
cisms, and he looked up from Sir Gregory to find 
that Olga and her companion had risen and were 
on their way out past his table. 

He saw that the companion was Audrey, but he 
had no time to think what that implied. It might 
have caused him to alter his opinion of Audrey, or 
it might have caused him to alter his opinion of 





Mr . Bassett Presumes 


141 


Olga, and it did neither; its effect was only to bring 
him sharply to his feet intent on seizing the God- 
sent chance of being introduced to Olga. He was 
so nearly not in time, but, being in time, he filled the 
aisle between the tables; he stood four-square in it. 
Only with awkwardness, only by touching him could 
Olga have brushed past him, and he quite palpably 
included them both in his, ‘‘Why, Miss Evelow, how 
delightful! ’’ 

She did not think so. Walthamstow intruded, 
Walthamstow trod heavy-footed into fairyland. Mr. 
Bassett was properly in his place in the office and 
improperly in a restaurant where she had lunched 
with her Olga. He threw her back from gay to gray. 

Let imagination picture, for contrast, the swim¬ 
ming gait, the quick opcoming in this encounter of 
Miss Minniver. How gushingly she’d greet him, how 
patronizingly she’d tolerate the Grand Western, 
how dashingly she’d introduce her sabled friend! 
‘ 4 My friend,” she’d seem to say, “immeasurably 
above your weight, my Bassett. But friend of mine. ’ ’ 
Gladys would glory in it. 

Audrey was for passing him with a bow, but there 
was no escaping an infatuated Bassett on those easy 
terms. He held his hand out and his other hand 
swung a napkin in all that his person left unfilled of 
the right of way; and one cannot refrigerate one’s 
employer. She took his hand, and he looked at 
Olga. 

“Mr. Bassett, Mrs. Wyler,” said Audrey. In the 
circumstances, there was nothing else for her to say, 
and it seemed that, in the circumstances, there was 
nothing at all for Mr. Bassett to say. Indeed, con- 




142 


The Wrong Shadow 


sidering what the circumstances were to him, it is 
to the credit of a gentleman struck by lightning that 
he did not fall, but with polite if inarticulate noises, 
bowed to Olga and made way for them to pass. Her 
name was Wyler. Her name. Hers. Mrs. Wyler. 
He stumbled to his chair, he ordered Courvoisier 
while the ladies after a slight hesitation went on and 
out. 

Mr. Bassett rallied himself. As he could not pos¬ 
sibly explain to Sir Gregory what had happened, 
he must at least give his guest an opportunity of 
ignoring the inexplicable. “Yes, by Jove,” he said, 
“that cross-examination of young Haverham—” 
He talked volubly of the contemporary divorce case. 
There is, conceivably, a connection between keyholes 
and divorce, but divorce is not yet a key-industry and 
it was of key-industries that they had last been 
speaking, but it was the headlines of last night’s 
evening paper that came first to his groping mind. 
Happily, they served to build a bridge to safety. 
Sir Gregory might be a baronet (and new honors 
weigh more heavily than old) and the father of a 
family, but he wasn’t, more than the rest of us, above 
a cause celebre. Enough of sanity was left to Mr. 
Bassett for the rubrication of a cross-examination 
which, indeed, had left very little to the imagination; 
and the two gentlemen warmed to each other in a 
glow of liquor brandy and moral indignation. For 
all that, when they got up to go, Sir Gregory in¬ 
vented an appointment at his club and Bassett’s 
chauffeur was disappointed of high speeds on the 
Eastbourne road. Bassett went to the Park: his 
thoughts demanded spaciousness. 




Mr. Bassett Presumes 


143 


III 

The specter of Herbert Wyler, unappeased, went 
with him in the Park. Squarely he faced his mon¬ 
strous fact that not yet, not even by a Canteen called 
Wyler, had he satisfied that exacting Familiar. He 
was horrified by its malignancy, by the infernal 
cunning that led him, rejoicing, to the brink of Hell. 
By the light of what ignis fatuus had he looked at 
this woman that he should have thought her a 
Cyprian? He had failed to gather his wits together 
even when he saw her in company with Audrey. It 
was not to be accounted for rationally; it was to be 
accounted for only by supposing him the victim of 
a retributive Fate. 

He asked questions, only to dismiss them as ir- 
relevancies to the fact. Was there, for instance, a 
conspiracy to which Audrey was a party? Absurd: 
she had done her best to avoid him and he hadn’t 
settled the venue of his lunch with Sir Gregory from 
the office but from his City club. Audrey neither 
expected to meet him at the Grand Western, nor, 
having seen him, sought an encounter. And who 
was Mrs. Wyler? Was she of Herbert’s clan? In¬ 
credible, but what did it matter who she was ? 

The fact mattered and the fact was that he had 
received a warning, maliciously italicized by the 
chance of this lady’s name being Wyler. He had 
thought himself free to marry, and then, because he 
saw a beautiful well-dressed woman in the Grand 
Western, he had grotesquely misjudged her and 
thought himself free to attain her. And to both he 




i 4 4 


The Wrong Shadow 


had got his reply. The reply was, “ You are not free 
to marry. So little free are you to marry that even 
when you think to sin, it is shown you that you are 
not free to sin. The name of the lady whom you 
soiled by your thoughts of her is Wyler. Consider 
that—Mrs. Wyler. Possibly—oh, don’t call it in¬ 
credible ; all things are possible—possibly Mrs. Her¬ 
bert Wyler. Suppose, just suppose that this is Her¬ 
bert’s widow!” 

That was the reply, dealing explicitly in possi¬ 
bilities and not in certainties. There was nothing 
certain except that a veil had been lifted and that 
below the first veil was another. He was invited to 
recognize that any deviation from the narrow path 
he had marked out for himself—any using of his for¬ 
tune except in the interests of humanity—led to pit- 
falls unfathomably deep in murky menace. He was 
to cry “Peccavi!” and the narrowness of his escape 
this time was to confirm him in unyielding resolution 
never to swerve again. 

He had fierce moments of revolt. The punishment 
did not fit the crime; soberly considered, there was 
no crime but an accident of which he had availed 
himself. It was such an accident that failure to 
avail himself of it would have been a sin against the 
light of common sense and because he hadn’t failed, 
because he hadn’t with impracticable quixotry de¬ 
stroyed the formula of Herbert Wyler, the conse¬ 
quence was to fetter him for life! Consequences as 
ill-proportioned to occasion as the Arabian genie who 
came out of a brass bottle and filled the sky with his 
prodigious height. So, under the pale flag of reason, 
he took the field against romance in a forlorn hope 





Mr. Bassett Presumes 


145 


to lay a ghost by logic and was routed. His romantic 
prepossession firmly held. He ought to have been 
quixotic; he ought to have put the formula in a 
safe deposit and to have advertised for Wyler; he 
ought to have buried the talent because it was not 
his to use. Even in the romantic view, it was only 
half a talent, needing the aid of Bassett’s personal 
contributiqn before it could be fertile, but he 
wouldn’t ride off on that horse. His own talent also 
was only half a talent: and he acknowledged the jus¬ 
tice of his chastening. It was severe; it was the 
sentence of a stiff-necked judge, a martinet of a 
judge, but of a judge who was justly in ermine. 

He would learn his lesson, he would not forget 
again that he was bound over to be of good and cir¬ 
cumscribed behavior. There would be no Bassett 
dynasty, and he even gave somber thought to the 
framing of his will. Then it occurred to him that 
he was cold, that a long sitting on a chair in the Park 
is conducive to low circulation on a winter’s day and 
that low circulation leads to low spirits and a pre¬ 
mature consideration of one’s latter end. He rose 
stiffly and forced numbed limbs to rapid action. His 
problem was not the disposal of Bassett’s and Wy¬ 
ler’s fortune after Bassett’s death, it was the con¬ 
tinuing discharge, day in day out, of his obligations. 
Morally, he had grown fat, he had rested, how in¬ 
securely he now knew, upon his laurels of the Wyler 
Canteen, and the Canteen had to be regarded in true 
perspective as an incident in his career of giving. 
Hadn’t he, behind all thought of Wyler, his real 
enthusiasm for making people healthy? And if it 
was consequent to, rather than behind, his thought 




The Wrong Shadow 


146 


of Wyler, it was none the less genuine. Vague plan¬ 
nings stirred in him; he seemed to turn a corner, 
from the shadowed street of buildings tottering to 
collapse on the passer-by, into a splendid sun-lit 
square; the optimist in the ascendant in him, Mr. 
Bassett, strode the Park, the picture of a gentleman 
who, if small, was singularly blessed by health and 
happiness. Homing nurse-maids admired. 

But would they have admired—it is certain they 
would not—if Fate, so greatly kinder to him than 
he guessed, had led him to overhear Olga and Audrey 
as they left the Grand Western? 

“I’m afraid your friend/’ Olga began tolerantly. 

“He’s my employer,” Audrey corrected. 

“All! Then I needn’t be polite. He’s had too 
much to drink. He swayed.” 

“It’s . . . it’s rather horrid,” said Audrey. Ob¬ 
viously, and she left it at that. Why, with that clear 
explanation staring at her should she look further, 
as far from the visible as to Walthamstow and to a 
Canteen of the same name as her friend’s? It had 
never occurred to her before to connect Olga’s sur¬ 
name, so rarely mentioned amongst them in any 
case, with the name of the Wyler Canteen and cer¬ 
tainly it did not occur to her now. Lamentably, 
there was nothing enigmatic about Mr. Bassett’s 
conduct. 




CHAPTER EIGHT 


THE MORIBUND MANSION 

I 

T HE point may be put that Mr. Bassett bad two 
lady secretaries, for one of whom he had no 
respect and for the other of whom he had deference. 
The incident of the condemned poster, and of Aud¬ 
rey ’s remonstrance, stood to her credit in his mind; 
he thought of Gladys as a “lady” secretary by 
courtesy, and of Audrey as a lady, and he was glad 
to think that Audrey, behind her cool official manner 
in the office, did not dislike him. 

It was the more disturbing then, after their meet¬ 
ing in the Grand Western, to be faced with an in¬ 
crease of her coolness positively arctic. She turned 
machine and nothing but machine. That was, indeed, 
Audrey’s normal view of her function in the office 
and she was doing no more than to correct any ten¬ 
dencies the machine might have been showing to ex¬ 
hibit humanity in a place where humanity was not 
required; but, to Bassett, her frigidity was a castiga¬ 
tion. Did he deserve this damnatory zero'? And, if 
she thought he did, why, why? He was justly the 
prey of the late Herbert Wyler, but was it with 
justice that he was intolerable to the living Miss 
Evelow ? 


147 


148 


The Wrong Shadow 


He might have cast this trouble from him, he 
might have found excuse to dismiss her and he 
might have found an easy consolation in the company 
of Miss Minniver. But it was indicated to him that 
here was a situation; and he faced his situations. 
He did not, it’s true, outstare a ghost, but free him 
of conscience and he was a fighter. Conscience had 
no message for him apropos of Audrey, and a man 
in the clutch of a major mystery maybe pardoned for 
being nettled by a minor. He had absolved her of 
being concerned, conspiratorally, in his discomfiture 
in the Grand Western, and he continued to absolve 
her. He believed she would, under no temptation, 
lend herself to melodrama—that introduction, ‘ ‘ Mrs. 
Wyler,” had certainly been melodramatic, but, as 
certainly, Audrey had been innocent of intention to 
gravel him. And if he granted her so much, chiefly 
because she was Audrey whom he respected, why 
the plague should she nip him in return with the 
shrewd frost of contemptuous manner! 

He stood it to bursting point then, choosing Miss 
Minniver’s lunch-hour, he said, “Miss Evelow, 
you’ve been with me for six months. Is it for me to 
remind you that you haven’t asked me for a rise!” 

“Oh . . . if I’ve earned it . . .” 

“I’m satisfied,” he said. “I’ll see the ca%, ~ > 
You . . . you’re satisfied! Let me be frank. 1 
thought lately that your manner—” r 

“But it wasn’t money!” she cried. 

1 ‘ Then it was something. You ’ll let me ask. I like 
my people to be satisfied. Most of all, if I may say 
so, those in this office, those with whom I’m in per¬ 
sonal contact. Come, won’t you tell me!” 





The Moribund Mansion 


149 


She hesitated, then, “Mr. Bassett,’’ she said, 
“don’t yon know?” 

“Does it date,” he asked, “from that Saturday 
when I saw yon in the Grand Western?” 

“Then you do know,” Audrey said resentfully. 
Was the man going to apologize to her? She hoped 
not. She was his typist, and she had no complaints 
of his conduct in.business hours; she had no right 
to complain of his misconduct out of business hours. 

“No,” he said. “I do not know. Was your objec¬ 
tion to my greeting you there? Am I personally 
obnoxious?” 

“I don’t think,” she said, “that you remember 
very well what happened.” 

Not remember, when every catastrophic moment of 
it seared his memory! “I remember very well in¬ 
deed,” then, as she looked at him, he understood. 
“Heavens, you thought . . . you thought . . .” he 
pulled himself together. What she thought had not 
to be shirked. It had to be put into words. “You 
thought that you, when with a friend, were accosted 
by your employer who . . . who was drunk. ...” 

Audrey flinched, then faced him. “If you do re¬ 
member very well,” she said, “what else was I to 
>k?” 

' made a mistake, Miss Evelow.” 
so, I’m sorry.” She showed, too plainly, that 
she did not believe him. Deceit was not in her, but 
ingenuousness, almost comically, was. And Mr. Bas¬ 
sett now that he knew the worst, now that the mys¬ 
tery was no mystery, could afford to smile at her. 
He might have chosen, certainly, to think it an in¬ 
sulting mistake, and he did not choose that. The 





150 The Wrong Shadow 


insult was venal in the circumstances; the circum¬ 
stances, as he already admitted to himself, that he 
would take from Audrey without resentment what 
he would take from no other woman. He had taken 
her reflection on his taste in posters and now he 
was taking a reflection on himself. It remained to 
put the matter right, as rightly right as he could, by 
telling her all that was possible of the truth. 

“When you leave the office after work,” he said, 
“you leave it thoroughly, don’t you?” 

Audrey agreed, “I try to.” 

“Successfully,” he said, “or you would have un¬ 
derstood. We have here a Canteen dedicated to the 
memory of my friend Wyler. You introduced me 
to—” 

“Oh, Mr. Bassett!” She was abased. She saw 
that friendship, broken by death, living still for 
Bassett in his daily life. She saw his deliberately 
unclosed wound, the unmeasurable tenderness for 
his friend of this man to whom she had allowed no 
feeling. She mentioned “Mrs. Wyler” callously 
without preparing him, and the name had stabbed 
him all unguarded in his most sensitive place. It 
was not quite the truth, but a gloss upon the truth; 
it was as close a reading of the truth as he could 
afford to offer her and he had not meant so heavily 
to score by the difference between the truth and the 
whole truth; but perhaps some score was due to him. 
“Mr. Bassett,” she said, “I’m too sorry for words.” 
Tears proved it in her eyes. 

“Don’t think of it again,” said the magnanimous 
gentleman. “I’m only glad we’ve cleared the air.” 





The Moribund Mansion 151 


“I shall tell my friend, of course. She . . . she 
thought the same.” 

44 Well . . .,” he said, and 44 the less you say about 
this to her,” he thought, 44 the better.” 

44 I can’t,” pursued the abject Audrey, 44 find out 
if her husband is related to your friend, for he’s 
abroad.” 

“Thank God for that,” he thought. 

There had been nothing personal in the warning 
he had received through Mrs. Wyler. She was the 
instrument of his mystic guide, no more than that 
and no less. Yet it was comforting to know that the 
husband of Mrs. Wyler was abroad. At the same 
time, a relation, a possible heir of Herbert! The 
husband of a sabled lady who lunched at the Grand 
Western related to old Herbert! It was absurd. 

In the event all that an uninterested Olga said 
was, 44 Oh? Well, I’m glad he wasn’t drunk. I 
haven’t liked to think of you in that office with ...” 

4 4 But in the office, ’ ’ Audrey began. 

4 4 You’re blushing, Audrey,” said Olga. 

44 Isn’t it enough to make me blush when I’d been 
thinking him rather a cad and . . . and then this! ’ ’ 

4 4 This!” 

44 Well, don’t you see, he doesn’t presume. We 
had this out and then he went back to being a ma¬ 
chine again. I—I think that’s nice of him,” and if 
Olga’s impulse was to say, 44 Machines are so cun¬ 
ning, aren’t they,” she restrained it. She was not 
Audrey’s keeper, and there was no reason why she 
should offer her a warning quite possibly superflu¬ 
ous, while there was, obscurely, reason why she 





152 


The Wrong Shadow 


would not have warned Audrey even had a warning 
seemed pertinent and urgent. It hardly came to 
that, hut there was young Max, who read his plays to 
Olga. She admired his plays; she was older than 
he was, and her feeling for him might be simply ad¬ 
miration of his work, qualified, if at all, by a pro¬ 
tective maternal sentiment. That was all; still, 
young Max and young Audrey . . . she wondered 
if she could have brought herself to give Audrey a 
warning against Bassett if that warning had seemed 
necessary. Fortunately it was not necessary: she 
was not called upon to make the effort; but she rec¬ 
ognized that it would have involved an effort. Young 
Max! 


II 

Bassett had surrendered to his fate. Once his 
ghostly ruler had assumed the terrifying projection 
of the shadow of Herbert Wyler, to the confounding 
of a deal in linen; once he had sent Dolly Wainwright 
as a purge to complacency and once, most menacing 
of all, he had sent Olga, Mrs. Wyler. Bassett had 
had enough melodrama and enough revolt; he ac¬ 
cepted shackles, he was the slave to conscience and 
he proposed never in his life to provoke another 
demonstration of his master’s mastery. He was 
free, within the narrowest boundaries, to go on being 
public-spirited, and he was not free to turn back 
or to turn aside. Life was under Wyler and under 
Wyler it was inexorably earnest: he had a mystic 
guide who brooked no mutiny. 

He had the blessed good fortune to be in no doubts 




The Moribund Mansion 153 


as to the best disposal of wealth—not England 
beautiful, not England Christian, not England edu¬ 
cated, but England healthy was his aim. 

One might buy up and blot out a considerable slum 
with a hundred thousand—and be lynched by the 
homeless evictees. One might create a garden sub¬ 
urb with it—but a very brief interview with the 
architect of the Canteen convinced him that he 
could not create a garden suburb. Costs were pro¬ 
hibitive for a model village on the plan he adum¬ 
brated, with spacious gardens and a Central Club¬ 
house, swimming-baths and gymnasium, and he de¬ 
cided not to build but to look for something already 
built. He aspired no higher than to secure and en¬ 
dow a country annex to the Canteen. 

Round it, conceivably, his village would grow but 
he kept an open mind. Large as his means were, 
they were not large enough for him to begin with a 
plan and to build according to plan, but, on the con¬ 
trary, he must begin by securing a building and 
then must determine its precise uses. The use 
would be first as a country house for children, per¬ 
haps only the children of Bassett’s employees, per¬ 
haps any children, gathered by some process of se¬ 
lection as yet undecided. The whole scheme was 
vague and had to be vague because it depended on 
an unknown factor—the accommodation of the house 
to be bought; but what he had in mind were, first, 
children (because that was to begin at the beginning 
or as near to the beginning as he could, and because 
the prevention of ill-health is better than the cure) 
and, second, room in the house for a few holiday 
makers from Bassett’s and unlimited room, on 







154 


The Wrong Shadow 


camping basis in the grounds, for a great many 
more: a nursery and country-club combined, prefer¬ 
ably by the sea, not too remote from town. 

He would have welcomed a sign from the late 
Herbert Wyler approving in advance of this inten¬ 
tion but that ghost was not in business as a thrower 
of bouquets and Bassett had to take the absence of 
hostile expressions as proof that all was well. De¬ 
voutly he hoped it, resolutely he ignored the awful 
possibility of receiving, in some hair-raising form, 
a message of embargo at the moment when he had 
committed himself to a costly purchase, and in the 
ardor of the hunt for a serviceable property he for¬ 
got his fears. 

It was the hunt of a solicitous huntsman, one not 
anxious to spare himself, bristling defensively 
against the notorious wiles of estate-agents. A 
man may probe and scrutinize, peer, rummage, pry 
and sound when it is a question of the house in which 
he is to live; but how much more serious was Bas¬ 
sett’s quest for a home not of himself but of his 
idea! Would he again have a hundred thousand 
pounds to spend! It ^vas possible; appetite for the 
Tonic grew by what it fed on; but not for many 
years could he hope to match his present occasion, 
and he meant to miss no chances by perfunctoriness. 
That country-house! He meant (as the poet says) 

To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care: 

To pursue it with forks and hope; 

To threaten its life with a railway-share; 

To chain it with smiles and soap. 

He didn’t care what time he spent nor how much 





The Moribund Mansion 155 


petrol he used. He didn’t care if he spent months 
in searching nor if he toured the Home Counties till 
they became as familiar as Walthamstow. And 
Gladys Minniver didn’t care either. She did not 
care because quite often, on Saturdays (not to sub¬ 
vert office discipline), she went with him. He said 
he needed a woman’s eye. 

There was rationed truth in that. Pantries, linen 
cupboards and suchlike huswifely appurtenances 
are, no doubt, the province of a woman, but it is to 
be doubted if a professional typist is their soundest 
judge and it is to be suggested that Mr. Bassett 
placed little reliance on the judgment of Miss Min¬ 
niver. She was rather blatant in the use she made 
of him. Her hopes of marriage had declined and 
she was, for that, the greedier to snatch all of a good 
time she could gain at his expense. She considered 
it his deserts, and if he cared to take her motoring 
in the country with dinner in town to follow and 
perhaps a theater afterwards, it wasn’t for her to 
prevent him. He cared to take her because he 
wished to accustom Audrey to the idea of his having 
one typist with him on these trips, so that, soon, he 
could suggest that country air was as good for Aud¬ 
rey as for Gladys and that Audrey, as well as 
Gladys, had a woman’s eye. 

He was in serious ethical difficulties about his atti¬ 
tude towards Audrey. He was a celibate, by order, 
and consequently the best he could say of his situa¬ 
tion was that flirtation with him was safe, and the 
worst was that it was unfair in him to flirt at all. 
He knew, and the lady did not know, of his Platon¬ 
ism. Exactly: it was one-sided, but he persuaded 





156 


The Wrong Shadow 


himself that in Audrey’s case (Gladys didn’t mat¬ 
ter; she got her good time and it was confounded 
impudence in her to expect more) it was not one¬ 
sided at all. He knew Gladys to be beneath him and 
he knew Audrey to be above him. That, surely, ex¬ 
cused him? She wouldn’t, were he marriageable, 
marry him: by accident his typist, his employee, but 
in all the things that seriously mattered, unspeak¬ 
ably his better. He wanted her companionship and 
since by reason of her superiority and his inferiority 
and the anti-marriage edict of the late Herbert Wy¬ 
ler, he could not hope for more than her compan¬ 
ionship, he meant to leave no stone unturned to get 
it. He settled it to his satisfaction that he did her 
no injustice by asking her to join the hunt. 

He had only to ask and the diffidence was, almost 
pitiably, hers. ‘ ‘ To go with you, in your car ? But, 
Mr. Bassett, it’s such . . . such coals of fire. I 
don’t deserve this of you.” 

She not deserve! But for a moment he was at a 
loss to know why she thought she did not deserve, 
then “Oh,” he said, “that! But we’ve forgotten 
that. Please. And it’s I who ask the favor. I ask 
you to work overtime on something that isn’t part 
of your job. Miss Minniver has been kind enough 
to assist me in this way—” Gladys was there—“but 
it’s not quite fair to call upon her every time. I 
wondered if you ...” 

‘ ‘ Oh, willingly. Most willingly. ’ ’ 

“Thank you,” he said and, keeping it solemnly 
up, “a division of these additional duties between 
Miss Minniver and you is, I think, fairest to all 
concerned. ’ ’ 





The Moribund Mansion 157 


Gladys had nothing to say. Of course she dis¬ 
counted his soft sawder, of course she wanted to 
scratch out Audrey’s eyes, but she had the honesty 
to feel that she had been a long time at the wickets 
. . . and she was still, on alternate expeditions, to 
bat. Half a loaf; but if she let herself go, there 
might well be no bread. The judicious lady swal¬ 
lowed humble-pie and addressed her sweetest smile 
to Audrey. She could not deny the right of an em¬ 
ployer to ask his clerks (as a favor to himself) to 
work overtime, but she heartily damned the em¬ 
ployer for hitting on that method of inviting Audrey 
to go motoring with him. 

Ill 

The search itself, and not the feminine mitigations 
of its austerity, dominated him. Half England was 
changing hands as the new plutocracy consolidated 
its gains, but earlier birds than Bassett had found 
the finest worms and his condition that the house 
should not be unreasonably far from London was a 
severe handicap. Industrious seekers had preceded 
him in the fifty mile radius from town, and though 
he ranged from the more obvious sea south and east 
as far west as Hampshire and north to Huntingdon, 
the satisfying estate was still to find. He became a 
thorn in the flesh of many agents. Patience was the 
badge of their tribe—the tribe of large-property 
agents; small houses were another story—but when 
they balanced the indefatigability of Bassett against 
their chance of pickings from the deal, they doubted 
if the game were worth the candle. Still, much easy 





158 


The Wrong Shadow 


money had come to them and the tide was turning; 
they persevered with Mr. Bassett, a substantial man 
if difficult. / 

The predestined house existed; he hadn’t a d^bt 
of that; somewhere was the house at sight of which 
his pulse would leap and every article of his being 
tingle to the exultant recognition of its rightness; it 
remained only to find it and in all honesty his enlist¬ 
ment of Audrey as co-seeker was not made solely 
for the pleasure of her society. His Eumenides had 
used her once, when they disciplined him sharply 
with the name of Mrs. Wyler: and what more likely 
than that they would use her again, that she was in¬ 
extricably woven into the web of his Fate? A 
thread, indeed, of gold, a light in darkness, but there 
is perfection of nothing, even of gloom, and he per¬ 
mitted himself the healing thought that Audrey was 
allowed him in abatement of his darkness. An arbi¬ 
trary thought, quite indefensible in logic, but, for 
Mr. Bassett, Audrey was not an attractive, she was 
a compelling woman; and love leads to frantic 
thinking. 

So, stern purpose rode with them in his car, and 
if a merry boy in wildly impish mood rode passen¬ 
ger as well, who searches cars for stowaways? And 
assume that the boy lay snug amongst the rugs when 
they left the car, assume he wasn’t with them in the 
houses they visited; even so, there is the difference 
in aspect of a woman in an office and the same 
woman in a house, and have you (after making those 
assumptions) no pity for a conscientious gentleman 
romantically persuaded that he was doomed to 
celibacy ? 




The Moribund Mansion 159 


See them amongst the chalk and the woods of the 
Hampshire and Sussex border, with names like Em- 
shot, Newton Valance, Hadleigh, Bramshot, Great 
Ward-le-ham and Manduit on the signboards of their 
road (who’d go to Honolulu that could go to New¬ 
ton Valance? Where’s the South Sea magic that 
can match the magic of our English village names ?); 
see them attack with hope a great house standing in 
a park, with pillared frontage, soundly built of the 
yellow stone of Weaver’s Down, but dilapidated be¬ 
yond easy curing. More than the corrosion of the 
war years of disrepair had gone to the debasement 
of this flagging house; the closer they explored, the 
sicklier it seemed. 

Hope ebbed in Bassett. “Another failure,” he 
announced. 

Audrey threw a creaking window open. “But 
with this view!” she cried. “This air!” The 
scent of pine blew like a benediction into the dead 
air of the room: rise topping gentle rise, the Downs 
swelled from her as she looked across the park; she 
stood sun-kissed, wrapt in the good picture at her 
feet, passionate and because the breeze was gusty 
on the trees, answering with all she was the delicate 
appeal of that fair countryside. Watching her, he 
had his own idea of a heart-expanding view. “We 
won’t say No to this if we can help it,” she implored. 
“Not till we’ve made quite sure.” 

Could he be backward though he judged that house 
a shell to rottenness, bought dear at any price? A 
truce to practicalities; here in this house were empti¬ 
ness and they; no cicerone, but Audrey glowing in 
the sun. 




i6o 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Indeed we will make sure,” he said and led the 
way upstairs. Eats scuttled, flooring creaked and 
plaster crunched beneath their tread and Audrey 
turned deaf ears and blinded eyes to all the evidence 
of ruin. The rooms were well-proportioned and she 
said so: in this the paneling was notable, from that 
the view exceptional. She had a good word for 
them all; briefed eagerly for the defense, she’d hear 
no slander of a house with such a landscape at its 
feet. The nurseries these rooms would make! Re¬ 
pairs, she granted, were essential, but anywhere he 
would have to do some reconstruction and, if any¬ 
where, why not here where woods and fields were 
colored in a more than common green? So upstairs 
to the attics, with this floor approved, upstairs while 
Mr. Bassett shook his head and did not mention a 
smell which he thought ominous and wondered how 
to check her bright, misguided advocacy. Nothing 
to her that the roof had leaked; wasn’t the pano¬ 
rama wider from the dormer windows than from 
below? With unextinguishable flame she danced 
from room to room, he leaden-footed after, snatch¬ 
ing from sight of her a deep and furtive joy. Sup¬ 
pose this house were not this house, suppose this 
house for them! For precious moments he was rav¬ 
ished by that stolen thought. 

“You agree?” she cried. “You do agree?” 

A steep drop from his dreamland. “Suppose,” 
he fenced, “suppose we go downstairs and talk it 
over when we ’re there. ’ ’ 

“All right—though the view’s at its best from 
here.” Her faith was in that view, but obediently 
she turned. 




The Moribund Mansion 161 


They found another stairway down, narrow and 
steep. Bassett, mindful of the smell he had de¬ 
tected, went before her and at a turn her heel went 
through a stair. Alert, suspecting dry-rot, he caught 
her as she stumbled forward. The stairway sagged; 
they were for a few moments in real peril, but Mr. 
Bassett was in heaven. He had his arm about her. 

There was (if you must look for it) absurdity in 
that. Two tread more heavily than one and where 
dry-rot is in question light going is called for. 
Again, if it came to jumping for it, linked jumping 
is a reckless enterprise, while Audrey, of the gym¬ 
nasium, knew how to fall softly. They did not think 
of these things and, indeed, to put one’s foot in pow¬ 
der, expecting solid oak, is a scattering of wits. She 
found his arm a comfortable thing. 

They grounded safely; safely, as to both of them, 
from a rickety staircase that moldered into dust; 
safely, as to Mr. Bassett, from the danger-heights 
of ecstasy. He panted in relief less from the stair¬ 
way’s menace than from emotional rocks negotiated 
by a hairbreadth. Almost he had kissed her but 
by the narrowest of narrow squeaks he did not; and 
panted in thanksgiving for escape. 

Kisses, like currency, have in the general view 
less value than they had. Light give, light take, the 
mindless intercourse of lips destroys the sanctity of 
osculation, but Audrey (and he knew it) was of the 
decent people. To her a kiss was not a token over¬ 
worn to insignificance. 

What he did not know was that, had he kissed her 
then, his kiss, as token, had sound chance to win the 
lady’s approbation. There were, on the one hand, 





162 


The Wrong Shadow 


Max who served her in detachment by writing a 
play, and on the other hand, Bassett to whom she 
warmed since, after forgiving her for suspecting 
him of insobriety, he had made her a partner in his 
search. But he had not a lover’s hesitations; love 
was prohibited to him and wasn’t it possible to read 
the episode of the staircase as a fresh warning 
against his resiliency? “Think of marriage if you 
dare,” the message seemed to say, “but as this stair¬ 
case is dangerous for her as well as for you, so, if 
you marry her, shall she become a sharer in your 
doom.” Had he been guilty of forgetfulness so pat 
upon his resolutions to remember? Merely on 
human grounds (to ignore for a moment the super¬ 
natural) he stood condemned. From the shadowy 
Ethel Winlatter he had plunged into his imbroglio of 
Olga and from that to Audrey. Passions so mobile 
horrified; what was it he could offer Audrey, sup¬ 
posing he were free to offer anything? Love, or 
only the latest accident of his susceptibility? Small 
wonder that he leaned, breathless, against the wall. 

She watched him with surprise, perhaps only to 
see him so unwarrantably overcome, perhaps be¬ 
cause she’d felt the symptom of a kiss which, not < 
coming when she braced herself to meet it, left her 
in air. “No damage done,” she said. 

“You might have been hurt badly. My fault 
entirely. ’ ’ 

“Yours? How?” 

“I’d smelt dry-rot, but you were so keen on the 
house that ...” 

“Oh . . . then it’s no good!” That disappoint¬ 
ment almost drove her questionings away. 




The Moribund Mansion 163 


“We’ve proved that rather personally.” He had 
his balance now. “Shall we get out into the sun¬ 
shine ? ’ 9 

“Yes.” She looked resentfully at the cobwebbed 
gloom of that moribund mansion which had made a 
fool of her certainly once and perhaps twice. Had a 
kiss hovered, and, if he had kissed her, would she 
now feel that the house was hateful? Wind and the 
sun drove speculation from her as they stood on the 
doorstep. “Mr. Bassett,” she said, “I’m sorry. 
It was not your fault but mine. You were too kind 
to tell me I was wrong about the house, but I was 
carried away by the view. And,” she insisted, “the 
view’s magnificent.” 

“And the best views,” he said, banging the door 
with symbolic emphasis , i i are improved by a cottage 
in the foreground where tea is to be had. Shall we 
look for the cottage?” They left the house of dis¬ 
illusionment, and at tea his preoccupation with a 
road-map and their homeward route was complete. 
Idiot, soppy imaginative idiot, that she had been to 
dream of kisses from this man! He was safe. Al¬ 
most to dullness he was safe. Machine! 

Mr. Bassett lifting his tea-cup with a steady hand 
was conscious of an extremity of suppression. He 
thought of it as a necessary, not an heroioc, suppres¬ 
sion : but necessity does not make heroes of us all. 




CHAPTER NINE 


ADVENTURES OF A PLAT 

I 

M AX PETERKIN dropped expertly off a bus in 
Claverton Street and knocked at Audrey’s 
door, apparently a modern young man of poor 
physique in mediocre clothes with a packet under 
his arm. Appearances deceive: a bus may bear a 
conqueror: Victoria Street is dog-latin for Persep- 
olis and Mecca is in Pimlico: an ill-tied parcel of 
typescript is a votive offering. Did he think, then, 
because his play was finished, that he carried a pass¬ 
key to immortality? Too much of sanity was his 
for the harboring of such imaginings, but he had 
done his best, and the best that was in him to do. 
Love wrought its common miracle: Love had en¬ 
larged him, Love freed his soul to range. It was not 
insolent to think this work was worthy of her, and 
therein the triumph lay. 

Behind him were accomplishment, the rigid dis¬ 
cipline to form, the tyranny of words and all the 
agony and sweat by which a man makes visible the 
beauty he has seen. Before him were the hazards 
of the future, the hundred mishaps that can come 
between the written and the spoken words of plays. 

The positive, to write a play; the comparative, to 

164 


Adventures of a Play 165 


get a play accepted; the rare superlative, to get a 
play produced. These sequels to achievement 
might, or they might not, arrive; they were not in 
question now. He w T as here to surprise Audrey by 
his feat, to read to her, to get her verdict. Ecstatic 
experience, to read one’s own loved words to one’s 
own loved lady! To pretend it was ordeal, to feign 
a fear of her condemning it! Let what might hap¬ 
pen in the future to his play, let nothing happen 
after this, still this was his hour. This was the peak. 

And as stout Cortez may have stayed to get his 
breath before he stood, silent, upon a peak in Darien, 
so Max stayed hesitant with hand raised to her 
knocker. The attitude of one saluting a shrine with 
uplifted arm before entering is suggested by Max 
testing the full flavor of anticipation outside a blis¬ 
tered door. At last he knocked with jocund rat-a- 
plan proper to the glad tidings he bore. Of Mrs. 
Appleford he hardly asked, 44 She’s in? Miss Eve- 
low is in?” Superfluous punctilio as he thought 
it, he yet put the question. 

The answer came to ravage him, 4 4 She’s out. ’ ’ 

Out! Incredible intrusion of the unforeseen! 
Why, when he had not warned her of his coming, 
why, when he counted on surprising her, should she 
be in on a fine Saturday afternoon? How could she 
be in, when she was out with Mr. Bassett in an 
Arrol-Johnston? She couldn’t, thought Audrey, be 
in two places at once. But he fell hard, numbed by 
anti-climax. 4 4 Have you an idea when she will be 
in?” he managed to ask as the door was closing. 

They don’t, in Claverton Street, demand of land¬ 
ladies the miracle of omniscience: there are too 






The Wrong Shadow 


166 


many tenants per house. “No, but she’s often late 
on Saturdays now. I shouldn’t wait if I were you.” 

Late? And why? With whom? A closed door 
was inscrutable. Perhaps with Susan Hammond. 
Heavens, what had happened and what might not 
have happened to them all in these months of his 
seclusion? It is not certain that alternation of ef¬ 
fort is had for a man’s work; it is possible he was a 
better chemist in the daytime because he was a busy 
playwriter at night and possible that he was a better 
playwright because he had, perforce, to compel his 
thoughts from his play while he was a chemist; but 
the part-time writer does not accomplish feats of 
rapid execution. He hardly knew when he began 
his play, but since then, whenever it was, he had 
been a devotee. He’d seen nobody, gone nowhere. 
He had worked. He had worked with unsparing 
stoicism to which this afternoon of love and laurels 
w^as to have brought the balm and the reward, and 
he awoke to the realization that the world does not 
stand still because one turns one’s back upon it. 

He had met with sharp rebuff, but he need not, 
after all, make a Waterloo of it. There was every 
reason why she should, this bright day, be out for 
the afternoon, and he needn’t torment himself with 
groundless apprehensions. It was disappointing 
but anyone, except a fool who wanted to drag the 
surprises of drama into life where they did not be¬ 
long, would have written to her or gone in to see her 
in the office. It was perfectly idiotic, both being at 
Bassett’s, that he had not set eyes on her in weeks. 
Damn his obsession; a human being was a bigger 
thing than any play! To be seized of an idea, to 




Adventures of a Play 


167 


know oneself master of one’s material—these were 
pungent joys, and art ... oh yes, he knew the cant, 
and it wasn’t cant either. Art did demand to be 
served in loneliness. At the same time, he had 
neglected Audrey, who might not understand, who 
might resent. So, swearing he had nothing to fear, 
he feared a hundred times a minute, and then 
thought of Olga, Olga to whom he used to read his 
plays, Olga who had encouraged him, who had, amaz¬ 
ingly, tolerated the puerile drivel of his salad days. 

He would go to Olga—he would, anyhow, have 
gone to her after Audrey—to astonish her with these 
fruits of his maturity. It was marvelous, or it was 
not marvelous but due to Audrey, how mature he 
felt, and how far he had advanced upon the plays 
which Olga had not derided. Olga, since Audrey 
came, was second best; she was married; she was 
not of their world but dived capriciously to them, 
amused herself with them; but she was woman and 
a man as private audience to the first reading of his 
play was unthinkable; she was woman and kind, and 
if he could not have the climax he needn’t go with¬ 
out a climax of a sort. His wasn’t the Fabian mood 
that day. 

And to be balked again! This coyness of first 
audiences grew ominous. 1 ‘She’s gorn,” said the 
porter at the flats. 

‘ ‘ Gone!” 

‘‘Let ’er flat and gorn. Know where! O’ course 
I know where. I know where and why. Grand 
Western. That’s where she is. Two suites, mind 
you. One for the nurse and the kid, the other for 
’im and ’er.” 




i68 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Him?” 

“Husband. Supposed to be, any’ow.” Was this 
the parallel to Mr. Bassetts belief in the essential 
sinfulness of beautiful women? But it was only 
spite. “These ’ere mansions aren’t good enough 
for ’im, the bleedin’ toff. Blime, not good enough! 
The nurse told me. Regular rowed his missus for 
being ’ere. Not good enough. My Gawd!” Uni¬ 
forms kindle loyalties and the resplendent uniform 
of this janitor—a Prussian general’s with improve¬ 
ments suggested by a wing commander’s in the 
R.A.F., 1921 fashion,—might well have led him to 
over-estimate the magnificence of the flats he senti¬ 
neled; but they were, in fact, choice and Max was 
disturbed not only by the elusiveness of his audi¬ 
ence but by the thought of this husband of Olga’s 
who contemned an exceptional flat. Puny cause of 
a grandiose effect, sixpence bought a salute from 
the uniforms of two nations, and the salute nour¬ 
ished his resolution to pursue her to the Grand West¬ 
ern, even, if needs be, to the presence of her 
irrelevant husband. 

A playwright, though aware that his tailor is not 
eminent and that brown paper parcels are not eti¬ 
quette, is not to be put down by the forbidding 
haughtiness of hotel-clerks. Max was profession¬ 
ally interested in hotels: where but in hotels do play¬ 
wrights plausibly gather together a number of un¬ 
related characters? He was too busy memorizing 
the architecture of the lounge to give heed to the 
censorious eye of the grand duke behind the counter 
—the duke, who, to the confounding of his antici- 




Adventures of a Play 169 


pations, was told through the telephone to send Mr. 
Peterkin up at once. 

Olga was alone and welcomed him with both 
hands. ‘ ‘ So Mahomet ’s come to the mountain,’ ’ she 
said. 

“This tall hotel V 9 he guessed. 

“I don’t mean that. I mean I’ve not been lately 
to the galleries and the galleries have come to me.” 

“ I’ve not been lately either and . . . perhaps I’m 
not the right Mahomet. I’m by way of being on the 
other side of the footlights at the moment—pros¬ 
pectively. ’ ’ 

“That parcel? You’ve come to read a play?” 

“I’m afraid you won’t have time.” 

She looked at the clock. “Two hours. The only 
question is tea first, after or between the acts ? ’ ’ 

“My voice will be grateful after an act.” 

She took the telephone and ordered tea in half an 
hour. “It ought to be something stronger,” she 
said. “But there’s nothing here. My husband’s 
keenly prohibitionist. ’ ’ She, he knew, took alcohol; 
he began to see this husband as encyclopaedically 
prohibitive, with, however, the tact to be out this 
afternoon. 

“There are eight characters,” he said, “and I 
know better than to try to act them. I’ll give you 
the name of each speaker with every speech. ’ ’ 

Olga nodded and lay on the settee for the read¬ 
ing. Occasionally, little sounds came from her and 
several times she laughed. He had the joy of find¬ 
ing responsiveness to humor which was often subtle, 
the assurance that he hadn’t been too subtle; and 





170 


The Wrong Shadow 


once or twice he had the disconcerting contrary of 
her laughter in the wrong place. It wasn’t roses all 
the way, but he had, on the whole, satisfying assur¬ 
ance that his play i ‘went” with its audience, sur¬ 
viving this first, lenient ordeal. Olga, beginning by 
beihg relaxed at full length on the settee, was curled 
up at the end of his act into a tight ball: as if her 
knees were an index of emotion, going nearer and 
nearer to her body as the play gripped her. The 
more she made a question mark of herself, the more 
confident he grew. 

The play was romantic comedy with, not a thesis, 
but, definitely, a theme. Of undated period, in 
language neither modern nor archaic, its conflict was 
between a man for whom the idea of immortality was 
too cruel to be borne, a man who held that death of 
this life ended all and who, consequently, was frank 
hedonist, and a woman who accepted with gladness 
the implications of immortality. For her there w r as 
a great light and an everlasting struggle upwards 
towards the light; for him there was this life and 
then the end. These were his protagonists and he 
set their feet upon the old romantic road; he said 
some things well and other things naively, and both 
seemed to Olga to be the right things. Before the 
commonplace story he used as framework dragged, 
he lifted it by wit from paltriness and all the way, 
as his couple trod their road through difficulties to 
love and faith, they met fresh characters who had 
with beauty or with whimsicality the ring of truth. 

Oh it would do, she thought, decidedly it would 
do. She tried, because she liked him, to be severe 
with his play and even as he read it, badly, it won 




Adventures of a Play 171 


her back each time she set herself in opposition. He 
had achieved and she glowed with pride in him. 
She had, were it ever so small, a share in his 
achievement. She had encouraged him; she had 
told him to go on. And it was to her he came with 
his fulfillment. 

He finished his reading and for a while she did 
not speak—not that she wanted to keep him in sus¬ 
pense, not that, after her continuous gurgles of ap¬ 
preciation, there was any doubt of what she thought, 
but because she could not speak. She paid his last 
curtain the involuntary tribute of a necessary 
silence, and watching her he wondered. Would that 
happen to him in a theater, that greatest guerdon of 
a playwright, that silent pause after the curtain's 
fall before the pent up emotion of an audience finds 
outlet in the physical relief of vehement applause? 
At least his reading, cold as play-reading is, had 
“got" Olga; it only lacked of ecstasy for him be¬ 
cause it was Olga and not Audrey whom it got. 

Controlling herself she said, “I'll order more tea. 
This is cold and you're hoarse." 

“Could I just have the milk if there's any left?" 

Simultaneously they felt that this was to bur¬ 
lesque nonchalance; he laughed hysterically and 
Olga cried, “Don't! Oh, Max, I know, I know. I’m 
just afraid to let myself go about it. Don't you 
know I'd scream with joy if I let myself come un¬ 
corked? I'd ... oh, damn this room without a 
piano . . . but it's this, Max. Just this—I think 
you've done it." 

“Oh," he said. “Oh. But, of course, it isn't I. 
You know who it is. You haven't heard this play 




172 


The Wrong Shadow 


without knowing who its heroine is. You do know, 
don’t you?” 

“No,” she said and “Yes, yes, yes,” she thought. 
“I do know but I want it from your lips. I want 
the thrill of hearing you tell me it ’si.” She looked 
at him expectantly. 

With passionate veneration he named his hero¬ 
ine’s original. “It is Audrey.” 

“Audrey? Audrey!” Obscurely she remem¬ 
bered that she had something to do with her hands. 
She wanted something for her hands to do. Milk. 
He had asked for milk. Comic of him. She took 
his cup and washed it out, and then the jug. A 
spasm shook her. Audrey! The whelp, the pup! 
Audrey! The jug was fractured in her fingers; 
milk stained the rose carpet of the Grand West¬ 
ern’s elegant suite: and milk, it seems, has heady 
fumes. 

“You whippersnapper! Lying through an after¬ 
noon. Coming to me with ... oh, go! Take your 
Audrey with you and get out. Get out, I tell 
you,” she repeated as he tried to speak. “Get 
out. ’ ’ 

Hugging an oozing parcel an empurpled youth, 
who had studied the architecture of the Grand West¬ 
ern’s lounge, made frantic shots at two wrong doors 
before scandalized commissionaires shepherded him 
to the conspicuous exit. 

The one-act farce by Max Peterkin entitled 
“Beauty in a Tantrum,” which had a vogue in the 
year 1922 , was written at white heat, on the Sunday 
following these events. He felt much better after 






Adventures of a Play 173 


writing it. He considered that an artist must not 
waste good material and that this one-act play put 
Olga in her place. But did it? 

n 

When the “bleedin’ toff” (his shirtings were emi¬ 
nent) came in, Olga was lying on the settee face¬ 
down with a drenched wisp of handkerchief in her 
hands. 4 4 Not dressing yet ? ” he said. 4 4 Why, what 
is it?” His foot, as he went to bend over her, 
crushed porcelain. 

Olga sat up. 4 4 That, I think. Crying over spilt 
milk. ’’ 

44 That’s soon put right. I shouldn’t have left 
you alone all afternoon.” Then he saw that there 
were two cups, and for a moment his distinguished 
manicure appeared to interest him, and after that 
he said, 44 There . . . there isn’t anyone you’d like 
me to thrash, is there?” 

44 Thrash me,” she said. 44 Or pet me. I’ve been 
behaving like something in a film. I think I still 
want to behave like something in a film. I daren’t 
look in a glass. Tell me I’m not a fright.” 

44 The petting goes,” he said. 

It went. For the next half hour she was smoothed 
and soothed till it was impossible to believe that in 
the eyes of a man there was a flaw in the sovereignty 
of her beauty. Eyes that could see Audrey when 
Olga was there to be looked at were not a man’s but 
a purblind puppy’s. 




i74 


The Wrong Shadow 


Later she said, “Pm glad I told you.” 

“Honey,” he said, “I’m for use just all the time 
I’m around,” and went to the writing-table. “It’s 
fine to know you’re cutting out that cheap theater¬ 
going lot. ’ ’ 

“Yes. This cuts them,” she said with meek ac¬ 
ceptance of his disparagements of her friends. 
“This cuts them finally because, of course, he’s 
never to know who is at the back of him.” 

“Well, there’s your knife.” The check he handed 
her was the price of an exceptional instrument for 
cutting, but as he said in reply to her delighted 
“Oh!”, “Why that’s nothing if it makes you feel 
good.” 

“That’s what it does do,” she said. “And I 
needed some making.” 

Which he read as a hint that more smoothing and 
soothing of a non-monetary kind was indicated. 
They dined late and afterwards she said, “I’ll go 
to see this man to-night and get the thing mov¬ 
ing.” 

‘ ‘ Shall I come ? ’ ’ 

“No. Let me do this. If I don’t, I’m doing noth¬ 
ing.” It was not, she meant, her money until he 
gave it her. She wanted, somewhere, if it was only 
by going to see Mr. Babbington Cammish, to be per¬ 
sonally busied about this affair. 

“You,” he said, “don’t need to do.” She was 
raised, by right of beauty, above the need to express 
herself in actions. She was grateful to him. 
“Thanks, my dear. You help me to help myself. 
But I’ll do this, if you please.” 

His gesture was a benediction. 




Adventures of a Play 


175 


III 

“We must live as we talk,” said Mr. Babbington 
Cammish, and as be said it often while to the out¬ 
sider he appeared to live sleekly and to talk aus¬ 
terely, it is to be supposed that he had some inner 
light by which deed and word were seen as one and 
indivisible. But he contrived in his public cause- 
ries about the theater to be plausibly on the side of 
dramatic angels: fondling his monocle he told audi¬ 
ences in his fat voice that a theater manager has to 
live and can only live by being the organizer of suc¬ 
cessive gambles: and that he couldn’t, every time, 
find gamblers whose taste in plays marched with his 
own. He then proceeded to demonstrate, at length, 
the impeccability of his taste: in a better world than 
this, he would have produced nothing but master¬ 
pieces. 

This practice of Mr. Cammish was known to the 
irreverent as “old Downy’s coney-catching,” but he 
was an idealist once and the idealistic flag-wagging 
of his lectures may have been genuine relics of his 
youthful faith. It preserved for him, except 
amongst the cynics, his reputation as a devoted 
worker for the highest interests of the theater, and 
at intervals, sometimes uncomfortably long, it 
brought him capital. 

The Cammishes will happen so long as art is the 
sport of economics, and, at the worst, isn’t it better 
to have had ideals and to have lost them than never 
to have had ideals at all ? Mr. Cammish, upon con¬ 
dition that he lived well, was an honest man. 




176 


The Wrong Shadow 


If he sought capital, he could be eloquent; hut 
when, as happened occasionally, capital came to him 
he did not ask the motives of the people who wished 
to back a play and chose him as their pilot. The 
reasons were likely to be of the kind which, if printed 
in a book, would be catalogued by a bookseller as 
“curious.” 

He had for some further weeks the lease of a the¬ 
ater; he had been running a moribund play which 
had exhausted its backers ’ capital more rapidly than 
usual; and the question he was putting to himself was 
which of his competitors was likely to pay him the 
largest profit on his already high rent for the theater 
during the remainder of his lease? 

A page-boy brought a card. “Don’t know her,” 
said Mr. Cammish, resenting interruption of his cal¬ 
culations. 

“Lady,” said the assayer promptly, and, to prove 
it, added, “Sables. Buick landaulette”—associa¬ 
tions which might, surely, have pointed to a success¬ 
ful chorus-girl. But Mr. Cammish trusted his 
page’s discrimination, which, if superior to Mr. 
Bassett’s, had enjoyed superior opportunity to 
develop; it was mature if the boy wasn’t and, 
“Show her in,” said Mr. Cammish without hesi¬ 
tation. 

It struck Olga, on a near view of him, that Mr. 
Cammish in his theater office compared badly with 
Mr. Cammish on the lecture-platform, but she had 
not come to him because she liked his face and did 
not go from him when she found that she disliked 
it; she had to grant him full of tact, she had to ap¬ 
prove his competent air of taking control of the situ- 




Adventures of a Play 


177 


ation without asking superfluous questions. As to 
the chief question, money, she left him no need to 
ask. She had an unexceptionable credential, her 
husband’s check. 

“The one vital condition,” she said, “is that Mr. 
Peterkin is not to know that I am responsible for 
this. Tell me how you propose to manage that.” 

Mr. Cammish reflected. “It does not present in¬ 
superable difficulties. He has probably written 
other plays !’ ’ 

“Oh yes. But—unproduced. And one-act plays 
only.” 

i i Still, he will have shown them round. Perhaps 
through an agent.” 

She thought so. 

“Then we take a slight chance. I write to him 
that I have recently had an opportunity of reading 
his play called— ?’ 9 She supplied a title—‘ ‘ and that 
it interested me keenly but that I have no use for 
one-act plays. Being in need, however, of a play 
for immediate production I wondered if he had by 
him a full-length play which he cared to submit to 
me. That ought to bring him here on the run with 
the manuscript; it isn’t strictly true, but—” His 
gesture asked, “What would you!” and Olga smiled 
indulgently. 

“But,” he went on as either the artist in him or 
the hypocrite prompted, “that isn’t quite all, you 
know. The play may deserve all you tell me of it, 
but I’ve to allow for the possibility that your judg¬ 
ment and mine won’t coincide. Money is not quite 
all in this business and I am (if I may say so with¬ 
out arrogance) a manager with a reputation to lose. 




178 


The Wrong Shadow 


I have to satisfy myself about this play before we 
go any further.” 

She liked him the better for it. “Oh, you’ll be 
satisfied,” she assured him confidently, and either 
that assurance, or the assurance of her check, 
caused him immediately to reply to his inquirers that 
the theater was no longer in the market; arrange¬ 
ments had been made. 

When he read the play, he formed the opinion 
that it was “a first-rate Stage Society piece,” that 
is, a play which would have a success with an eager 
and educated audience if produced before them when 
they were in generous mood on a Sunday evening, 
and no success at all with the Big Public. But that 
was not against it from Mr. Cammish’s point of 
view; on the contrary, it was for it; it was the sort 
of play to enhance his reputation with the Intellect¬ 
uals; it was a “critics’ play” and, equally to his 
point, it was a costumier’s play. This time hand¬ 
somely financed, he need not haggle with the cos¬ 
tumiers, who might, next time, remember it to his 
advantage. And if, as he expected, the play failed 
he lost nothing by it, even in the estimation of his 
colleagues. They would not think him mad to have 
put up such a play; they would only think, admir¬ 
ingly, that Old Downy had caught another mug. 

Though he did not anatomize motives, he per¬ 
mitted himself after he met Max to wonder what 
on earth the woman saw in him. What he saw was 
a highly-strung, cheaply-dressed young man who had 
not slept since he received Mr. Cammish’s letter, 
and it offended Mr. Cammish’s sense of fitness that 
he was not allowed to make a “business-like” con- 




Adventures of a Play 


179 


tract with him. Positively, in the improbable event 
of success, the author would make money! Mr. 
Cammish felt that it was criminal to offer a new 
author, a green one if ever author was green, terms 
which would (almost) have been approved by the 
Secretary of the Authors ’ Society. He compounded 
with conscience by reminding himself that the play 
couldn’t possibly succeed, and he had no scruples 
about engaging actors for the run of a play, in which 
he saw no run. The actors would take their chance: 
that was what actors were for. 

IV 

Max had disposed of Olga; she was translated; 
'she existed only in a one-act farce, and one did not 
write letters to a person of a farce, or he might have 
sent to her to say, 4 ‘ But this play, which is Audrey’s, 
is going to be produced.” He did not say it, be¬ 
cause he had bottled up his emotions about her into 
a one-act play, and he was not going to decant them 
now. How much more dignified to let the stagger¬ 
ing news of his triumph reach her through the cold, 
impersonal print of a newspaper! How much 
more bleak would be her surprise and how com¬ 
pletely she would understand that he had finished 
with her! 

So much for Olga who had turned his climax into 
a paranoiac’s tantrum, but, as for Audrey, he had 
to admit that, thanks to Olga’s brain-storm, the true 
climax was still to come. He was not to go to Aud¬ 
rey now merely with the sterile news that he had 
finished her play; he had to tell her that, so 




i8o 


The Wrong Shadow 


soon, actors were to bring bis written words to life. 

He was uplifted, but it bad gone rather to bis 
heart than to bis head. His point was that it was 
her play, that the wonder of acceptance came be¬ 
cause of her; it was the Audrey in it that bad be¬ 
witched Mr. Cammish; it was her light which could 
not be put out. 

Herself, she did not feel a lighter of lamps; rather 
she dwelt in a twilit maze where every pathway led 
up to a question-mark. She was disturbed by the 
ambiguity of the affair of the staircase, she was dis¬ 
turbed by Bassett, and by her conviction that some¬ 
where she had blundered. There was a mist of 
inexplicability over that affair and the two clear 
points she made were that he had suffered and that 
a failure of hers was accountable for his suffering. 
She couldn’t shake off her burden of responsibility, 
she couldn’t dismiss that enigmatic episode from 
mind. Positively, she felt that it was aging her, that 
she was brooding over Bassett, that it was idiotic to 
brood over Bassett and yet that it was her job to 
brood over him. 

Max came as claimant, not as supplicant, looking 
extraordinarily young and happy. Youth and hap¬ 
piness seemed to her to be irrelevant. They were 
not what she was thinking about. A radiant boy 
jarred on a lady pondering the troubles of a man. 

“You!” she said coolly. “Do you know you’re 
looking very well?” she asked of him who had slept 
lately like a sailor in a typhoon. 

He missed the resentment in this greeting. “I’m 
feeling very well,” he said because, in this exultant 
moment, it was true. “And the reason is you.” 




Adventures of a Play 


181 


“I? I whom you haven’t seen for weeks? I’m 
the reason? Then not to see me suits you, and we 
must continue to look after your health.” 

44 Oh Lord, Audrey, don’t rot. I’ve come with the 
most splendid news, and you sound as if for two 
pins you’d call me 4 Mr. Peterkin.’ ” 

4 4 It’s some time since we met, ’ ’ she reminded him. 

That damnable habit of the world’s of not stand¬ 
ing still! 44 I know. But you know what I retired 
into private life to do. I took you with me, if it 
comes to that. You can’t call it a case of out of 
sight, out of mind when I’ve been—damn it, there’s 
only one word—worshiping you every minute of the 
time. ’ ’ 

She tried to think of this as, so to speak, infringe¬ 
ment of her copyright in herself; she had not author¬ 
ized his use of her as model; and had she so great an 
interest in plays as to thrill at the idea of being of 
use? A little motoring in Bassett’s car, perhaps not 
because it was a car and his car but because it took 
her to the country, had made the galleries seem re¬ 
mote from her. 44 And wouldn’t you say,” he asked, 

44 that success was a sort of justification?” 

4 4 Success?” 

44 That’s what I have to tell you. That’s what 
you’ve done for me.” He told her of the play and 
of the astonishing Mr. Cammish and if she didn’t 
kindle to the flame he looked for, if the lady was re¬ 
luctant though her knight had fought and won with 
her favor on his lance, she listened sympathetically 
enough. After all, there was a world where this 
was a great achievement. Was she throwing back 
to Colonel Evelow that she should doubt that world 





182 The Wrong Shadow 


her world! And why, of all inopportune times, 
should she be seeing now the troubled eyes of Frank 
Bassett? She struggled to be fair to Max. “You 
helping me,” he ended, “that’s what I’ve done.” 
He looked expectancy. 

It was her move. Intent upon his story he hadn’t 
felt her coldness yet; now she must either disap¬ 
point him or pretend, and she wanted to do neither. 
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” he prompted her who was, he 
thought, tongue-tied by ecstasy. “Isn’t it beyond 
words wonderful?” 

“I ... I do not find words easy,” she said, 
truthfully. 

“No,” he smiled in victory. “But deeds, Aud¬ 
rey? Deeds?” And he rose, he came near her— 
oh, she must talk, she must find words to fend him 
off. 

‘ * Oh, but you ’ll think me stupid and I do see what 
this is. It’s splendid. From the gallery to being 
produced! It’s like making one leap of it from 
camp-follower to field-marshal. It’s a great, great 
thing to have done. ’ ’ 

“With you, I did it.” 

“No. Leave me out.” 

‘‘ Leave you out! ’ ’ Leave out the sun! 

“My share, I mean. I have no share. It only 
exists in your imagination, Max. Can’t we be glad 
of this without complicating it with me?” 

“No, we can’t get away from the complication. 
We can say it’s the commonplace complication of a 
man with a woman and I daresay to the onlooker it’s 
the same old platitude over again. All that’s hap- 




Adventures of a Play 183 


pened is that you Ve come into my life and magnified 
it. You’ve magnified my work. That’s nothing ex¬ 
traordinary; it’s only love and the onlooker’s en¬ 
titled to be bored. But I’m not the onlooker and it 
excites me; it excited me into writing this play. 
Plays mayn’t be much . . . but they are my way 
out. I can’t make centuries for Middlesex and all 
the continents have been discovered. I can write 
plays. It’s the form I go into and I needn’t worry 
whether it’s a form to boast of or to be ashamed of 
because I’ve as little to do with choosing it as I have 
to do with choosing the color of my hair. Plays 
are my job and you may or may not care to marry a 
man who’s connected with a distillery.” 

“With what?” she cried. She might have inter¬ 
rupted half a dozen times in half a dozen ways, but 
the incongruity of this word caught her. 

“Surely you agree,” he said, “that plays are the 
quickest way out of Bethnal Green? Surely plays 
are the noblest intoxicant of them all? These things 
are a matter of faith, and I daresay each of us makes 
his own theater as each of us makes his own God. 
I get spirituality out of the theater, but I may get 
it because I take it in with me, and I don’t boast that 
in being connected with the theater I’m connected 
with a spiritual place. I put it, instead, that I’m 
connected with a distillery, because distilleries are 
also places where they issue tickets to Cloud- 
Cuckoo Land. I prefer first-class tickets and I 
serve the theater. It is just as well to have these 
things said, Audrey, because they’re so much to the 
point. You see, I shall continually be going to my 




The Wrong Shadow 


184 


earth to write a play, and last time I went to earth, 
you, because you didn’t quite understand, were jeal¬ 
ous of my play.” 

“Jealous? Do you know what you’re saying?” 

“I’m making love,” he said, “and I’m pointing 
out that my wife’s husband won’t go to an office 
every day. He won’t work regularly, but when he 
does he’ll sport his oak against all comers. He’ll 
be moody and peevish and when he’s in the humor 
to be gay, not twins with scarlet fever and a wife 
stark mad with apprehension will drive the singing 
from his soul. I’m telling you he’ll be a hell of a 
handful and you’d know where you were with some 
men. You’d read them as you read in a book that’s 
written in your own language. You’ll never know 
where you are with me. Did you fancy I offered 
you happiness? Happy in this bloody mess of a 
world! No, my dear, if we can put one thing of 
beauty where there was ugliness, that’s ambition 
enough. You—I offer you love. I offer you a half 
share in a struggle.” 

“Max,” she said, “you’re going about this well. 
I . . . yes, I was angry, I was jealous of the play. 
You seemed to come towards me, to advance very 
definitely, and then you disappeared. You piqued 
me. ’ ’ 

“And it will always be that way. Not so liter¬ 
ally. One can’t literally disappear from a wife in a 
flat. I’d be there; only it wouldn’t be me. Worse 
than being married to a sailor. When he’s at sea, 
he’s not at home. I’d be both.” 

“Max,” she said, “my father was in the army 
and when they retired him, he and I kept house to- 




Adventures of a Play 185 


gether. It ... it took him years to get used to be¬ 
ing retired: you can take it that I’m salted to having 
a man about the house.” 

‘‘ Then I may go on?” 

“Go on? I’d rather you didn’t.” 

<L> 

“But, hang it, I’ve only stamped on the ground 
so far. My leap’s to come. My leap’s to you.” 

“You mean you want to make love like a poet?” 

“I’ve been pretty domestic up to now.” 

“Isn’t that where love belongs? You’ve offered 
me something, Max. ‘A half-share in a struggle.’ 
You thought it necessary to defend the kind of strug¬ 
gle. Your struggle is plays.” 

“Yes. I half defended. That’s because I’m not 
quite certain that the theater is a faith of yours.” 

“And I am not quite certain that it is. But that 
wouldn’t matter. Your man’s job isn’t scoring cen¬ 
turies at Lord’s or exploring new continents; it’s 
writing plays. And any job of the man I love is 
right. Don’t you see that if I love you any job is 
right ? ’ ’ 

“Well, of course, I was coming to that. The 
greater includes the less. I didn’t fire the point- 
blank question, but I—” 

“No. Don’t. Not yet, Max. I’m not quite 
blind. I saw how you came in and . . . yes ... it 
was my fault that I hadn’t realized how, for you, it 
was no time since you saw me last. I don’t forget 
that but, for me—” 

It was remarkable but, for her, there was Frank 
Bassett. Max had grown and gained and she did 
not see him now as a radiant boy, offensive in his ill- 
timed happiness, but as a man like other men. Like, 





186 The Wrong Shadow 


for instance, Bassett. They were both men, and 
they were two and if Max had at this moment the 
advantages of propinquity and bays, Bassett had 
mystery. There was no mystery about Max, for she 
refused to be caught by the mystery of his being a 
creative artist ; that was, as he said, his job and from 
her point of view a job more uncomfortable and far 
less mysterious than stock-broking. 

While Frank Bassett, on those stairs and after¬ 
wards, had mystified. He was the eupeptic figure of 
a glamorous enigma; he was tenant in possession of 
her mind not to be evicted at short notice by Max 
Peterkin. Even if there was nothing deeper than 
curiosity in her musings about Bassett, Max had not 
obliterated them. She had no answer for him yet. 

“For you?” he said. 

‘ 1 Give me a breathing-time,’ ’ she begged. 

“They say rehearsals are the deuce,” he pleaded. 
“It would be sweet to know there’s certainty 
behind . 9 9 

She shook her head. “I have no certainties to 
offer, Max,” she said. 

For a moment he was tempted to play the con¬ 
quering male, to be the resolute, unflinching lover, to 
take her in his arms and—and, as he prophetically 
foresaw, to be expertly disposed on the floor by a 
lady whose muscles were in practice for something 
tougher than pen-driving. Droll state of a victori¬ 
ous knight put on his back in catch-as-catch-can by 
his athletic lady! The very bathos braced him to 
accept delay. 

“All right,” he said with a smile which almost 




Adventures of a Play 


187 


gave her a Max-mystery to match a Bassett, “I’ll 
wait, ’ ’ and so was gone. 

In the street he discovered under his arm a copy 
of his play, unread to her, by her unread, and his 
play seemed to him to matter not at all. He would 
have given his play, he would have given all Shake¬ 
speare and Max Peterkin for one kiss from Audrey 
Evelow. 

The capriciousness of climaxes! 






CHAPTER TEN 


THE FUTURE OF FARUNDELL 

I 

O CCASIONALLY, when ceremony was clearly 
demanded of him, Lord Litherbrow was as 
much the grandee as his punctilious wife could de¬ 
sire, and perhaps to a fifteenth baron a well-graced 
air of rank is nature’s gift, but he found happiness 
in being the simplest of country gentlemen at his 
place in Suffolk. He was a little bored by being 
Lord Litherbrow and very glad to be the squire of 
Farundell; the misfortune was that he must continue 
to be Lord Litherbrow and was like to cease being 
the squire. 

Farundell was named by an ancestor of Lord Lith¬ 
erbrow on his mother’s side, and the intention may 
have been to suggest that he thought it a snug little 
place. Not an Arundel, but a Farundell, which 
word means the fourth part of an acre, and, since 
the house covered more ground than that, we may 
see its builder either as one given to the sort of mod¬ 
esty which is pretentiousness upside down or as a 
scholarly man (for surely the term “farundell” was 
archaic already in the reign of Queen Anne) setting 
his heirs, by the unaspiring name he gave his house, 

the example of restraint. 

188 


The Future of Far undell 189 


It was not a stately home of England, but it was 
more than that: it was a comfortable home and Lord 
Litherbrow had other houses where he lived and 
Farundell which he loved. But neither was it mean 
and if its owner had been taken by the eccentric de¬ 
sire to sleep each night for a month in a different 
bedroom in Farundell there was nothing to prevent 
his indulging his whim. It would, though, have dis¬ 
turbed the servants, and at Farundell one disturbed 
nothing any more than in a humbler house one dis¬ 
turbs that room which the master calls his own. 
That, precisely, was the employment of Farundell in 
Lord Litherb row’s life; he retreated here to asylum; 
it was here that he came on furlough from his wife; 
it was here he meditated those speeches on agricul¬ 
ture which made him respected in the Lords even by 
those peers of the newer, noisier trades who disrel¬ 
ished his pertinent reminders that agriculture was 
still Britain’s leading industry. He thought with¬ 
out vainglory of those speeches and of the knowl¬ 
edge from which they sprang; they had significance, 
and they might lose it now. He had the fixed idea 
that Farundell contributed to the effectiveness of his 
speech-making; he was alarmed for agriculture if 
his speeches must be meditated under another sky 
than that of Farundell. He cared less for himself; 
these were hard times and a man must not be selfish, 
but it would be a wrench to part from Farundell, 
this mellow place set amongst formal gardens in an 
East Anglian hollow, the nearest station six miles 
away, the # nearest golf links twelve, the library mod¬ 
ern and readable, of his own selecting, the rooks so 
curiously lulling to a tired man in a camp-chair. He 




igo 


The Wrong Shadow 


must remember, if the worst came to the worst, to 
safeguard the rooks. 

Farundell, then, was his sanctuary, and one does 
not do business in a place of refuge. Nevertheless, 
it was with Mr. Edwardes, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 
that Lord Litlierbrow was sitting on the lawn at 
Farundell. In this conference he wished on his side 
to stand alone, without his wife and without his heir. 
He had to see things as they are. 

Mr. Edwardes referred to the Duke of Westmin¬ 
ster and to the Duke’s sale of Gainsborough’s “The 
Blue Boy.” He coughed diffidently. “There are 
works of art in the galleries at Litlierbrow, ’ ’ he said. 
“And America—he made a gesture. 

“Not ‘ and’ America, Edwardes. In this connec¬ 
tion, I think it’s ‘but’ America.” 

“Do I quite follow!” wondered Mr. Edwardes. 

“When England was a rich country,” his lord- 
ship said, and Mr. Edwardes winced to hear un¬ 
palatable truth, “the art of Italy and Spain poured 
in to us. Today the slant is across the Atlantic.” 

“Then you would consider selling—!” 

“Selling my ancestors, like the fellow in the play! 
Oh, don’t look apologetic, Edwardes. I would con¬ 
sider selling them, but would America consider buy¬ 
ing them! It’s the regrettable fact that the galleries 
at Litlierbrow contain sad rubbish.” 

“Mvlord!” Mr. Edwardes was scandalized. 

“If you mean by that that America doesn’t know 
rubbish when it sees it, I disagree. America has the 
sense to look through the eyes of experts. But if 
you mean that it’s a pity my ancestors didn’t choose 
their artists more wisely, I am with you. It’s an- 







The Future of Far undell 191 


noying, but,” be defended their taste in painters, 
“they were not thinking of the saleability of their 
portraits.” 

Mr. Edwardes didn’t believe a word of it. Here, 
in his view, was another of his impracticable aristo¬ 
cratic clients who found themselves between the 
devil of high taxes and the deep sea of ruin and con¬ 
sulted him with the air of being ready to take ad¬ 
vice and the reality of refusing all suggestions. He 
was reaching the end of the tether with Lord Lith- 
erbrow, whose point, actually, was not refractori¬ 
ness but the earnest wish to canvass all possibilities 
before he fell back on what he had himself decided 
was the inevitable course. 

“The Duke of Portland,” said the client, “tells 
his tenants that the legacy duties payable at his 
death will make it impossible for his successor to 
keep up Welbeck Abbey; Stowe Palace is sold; the 
Marquis of Linlithgow decides that he can no longer 
keep up Hopetoun House; the Duke of Westminster, 
as you remind me, sells a masterpiece. The old 
order changeth, Edwardes, and,” he smiled, “when 
it’s doldrums for dukes, should a baron barge?” 

“We are all sufferers, my lord,” said Mr. Ed¬ 
wardes, glad to find a client who, at least, admitted 
the general case. “Even I in my small way—.” 
He paused. 

“Precisely, Edwardes! We said we were in the 
war to the last shilling. That shilling is becoming 
visible to some of us. One’s last shilling! A gal¬ 
lant battle-cry, Edwardes, but I don’t like this near 
view of my last shilling. Still, I exaggerate. There 
are possibilities.” 




192 


The Wrong Shadow 


“I ... I have mentioned them." 

“And I fight yon about them. The entail. The 
settled property. The possessions not of me, not of 
Henry Eustace Mauriewarde, but of the barony. 
Wouldn't you say that an entail is a sort of heredi¬ 
tary oath? It's a pretty desperate thing to break 
an entail." 

Edwardes had been through many arguments 
about entails. He was becoming a legal anarchist; 
his office in the last few years was a cemetery of en¬ 
tails. They protested the inviolability of entails; 
they were outraged by the suggestion that things 
which were settled could be unsettled; and in the 
end ruthless circumstance was making Society Bol¬ 
sheviks of them all. Rather wearily, he decided 
that he had to repeat to Lord Litherbrow the un¬ 
answerable reasonings, his little bitter jest about 
England's devastated area being the House of 
Lords, his other phrase about deferred casualties of 
the war with his lordship as an officer casualty, and 
so on. Perhaps not “so on" as longwindedly as 
usual: Lord Litherbrow had shown a good, and even 
a humorously tolerant understanding of the situa¬ 
tion. He was only balking at the last fence, hesi¬ 
tating before the necessity of breaking an entail. 

“Present circumstances," he began, “were not 
anticipated by those who made the entail." 

“A man has his job, though. Don't you see that, 
Edwardes? My job's a poor thing. Let's call it a 
decaying industry and I wouldn't choose it but I 
can't escape it just because there are more kicks 
than ha'pence about my job of being a baron. You 
tell me I can cut the entail and that circumstances 




The Future of Far undell 193 


justify that course. I tell you it is the intention of 
an entail to be above circumstance and it’s my job 
to respect that intention. So far as in me lies, I 
shall keep faith with the past. I will break no 
entails. ’ 9 

A touch of braggadocio? Ordinarily, Mr. Ed- 
wardes would have discounted such a declaration, 
but there was, in the case of this client, an alterna¬ 
tive so obvious that Lord Litherbrow must have 
thought of it and conviction grew on the solicitor 
that his lordship had thought of the alternative 
without dismissing it as unthinkable. Instead of 
looking for the lightest sacrifice, this unusual client 
was clearly proposing the heaviest. Mr. Edwardes 
knew what Farundell meant to Lord Litherbrow. 

“I’ll break no entails,” was repeated, “while I 
needn’t: and I needn’t. There’s Farundell.” 

“I had refrained from mentioning it,” said Mr. 
Edwardes. 

Lord Litherbrow nodded. ‘ ‘ Thanks, ’ ’ he said. ‘ < I 
understand. But one must not be selfish.” 

It was at the tip of Edwardes’ tongue to say that, 
on the contrary, one must be selfish and that if one 
wasn’t selfish for oneself nobody would be selfish for 
one; to ask Lord Litherbrow how well he knew his 
son and if he doubted that his son would lightheart- 
edly break an entail, and whether it was worth while 
to part with Farundell seeing that the effect would 
be no more than to postpone for a generation the 
break up of the Litherbrow estates. But he said 
none of these things. He held his tongue because 
he saw at last that he was not here to give advice 
but to take instructions from a client who had looked 




194 


The Wrong Shadow 


at his situation for himself and stood in no need of 
help to make up a mind already decided. 

“Farundell,” said his lordship, “is almost a vice 
with me. It is not Litherbrow property and in my 
mind I have exalted this place, which was my moth¬ 
er’s, above the Litherbrow property. That’s a sort 
of sin, Edwardes.” 

“Oh, come,” protested Mr. Edwardes. 

‘‘ At least, one can’t have one’s private pleasaunce 
nowadays. It’s excessive, like keeping on your 
stables though you always go by car . . . Let’s come 
to facts, Edwardes. Farundell is freely mine. I 
can sell, and I suppose there are buyers. But I love 
Farundell. I want my price for it—we’ve got to 
have the price—” 

“Oh, it’ll bring what’s needed,” he was assured. 

“Good. But I want more than my price. If 
Farundell is to house a profiteer, I mean to know 
that he’s a tolerable profiteer. If it’s to be a school 
or an orphanage—” 

“Oh!” cried Edwardes. 

“But it’s the place for that. I only stipulate nice 
orphans. I’ve got to see the fellow who buys and 
I’ve got to approve the fellow. He’s got to leave 
my rooks alone and my—oh, lots of things. Auc¬ 
tion might bring the better price, but I think private 
treaty will bring the better man. Possibly you can 
suggest a buyer?” 

Edwardes shook his head. “I practice amongst 
the sellers,” he said sadly and proudly. “It will be 
necessary—it is certainly advisable—to advertise 
the place for sale.” 







195 


The Future of Farundell 


Lord Litlierbrow swallowed hard, then rallied. 
“Yes/’ he said. “We are all washing our mourn¬ 
ing in public. But do this for me yourself, Ed¬ 
wardes. Don’t put it in agents’ hands. Agents’ 
advertisements distress me. The ghouls will gloat, 
and God knows to what tragedies sales are the cur¬ 
tains. Be ... be tender with Farundell.” 

Mr. Edwardes did not love a lord. He loved his 
aristocratic practice, which is a different thing from 
loving the aristocrats, but he was moved against 
reason to say, “But is this necessary?” 

“Isn’t it?” 

“Well . . . yes, it is;” if, he meant, the other 
stood by his scruples and insisted that the Lither- 
brow estate was, for him, inviolable. 

“I shall stay here,” said Lord Litherbrow with¬ 
out conscious pathos, “up to the last day. The 
people who reply to your advertisement, will you 
weed them out for me? Don’t send here the kind of 
man to whom you know I couldn’t sell Farundell. I 
. . . I shall show them round myself. They will be 
judging it and I shall be judging them.” He rose 
abruptly and left his guest. Five minutes later, 
Edwardes, still sitting in the sun, saw Lord Lither¬ 
brow in the rose-garden, stooping over a plant. He 
stooped low, then straightened himself and raised 
his hand to his lips. Earth fell from it: and Mr. 
Edwardes turned his eyes quickly from their un¬ 
warrantable intrusion on an act of private worship. 
It is an act, merely, of sentiment to kiss a rose, but 
the owner of Farundell had not kissed a rose. He 
had kissed the dust of England’s ground. 





ig6 


The Wrong Shadow 


II 

The England of those days may be likened to a 
treasureship which under stress of storm had light¬ 
ened cargo and found herself in still tossing waves 
with her remaining (\argo shifted. And the shifted 
cargo proved, as they might tell you wryly at Car¬ 
diff or Bradford, of volatile quality; there were men 
made- ex-millionaires more quickly than they had 
made themselves millionaires, and by the time when 
his necessities forced Lord Litherbrow to put Far- 
undell up for sale the large-property market had 
found its new balance. He had said, “I suppose 
there are buyers,” and Mr. Edwardes had replied 
with confidence, “Oh, it HI bring what’s needed,” but 
there were more sellers than buyers in the market, 
and the owner’s instruction to be “tender” with 
Farundell prevented Edwardes from noisy adver¬ 
tising in a day when only stridency seemed audible 
at all. 

Edwardes discouraged the inquiries of two or 
three callers because he felt sure that they would be 
personally unacceptable to Lord Litherbrow, and 
after them there came a pause while the unobtrusive 
advertisement was continued and respondents 
ceased. It was so long a pause that Mr. Edwardes 
wrote to his client suggesting that the next inquirer, 
however unprepossessing, should be urged to visit 
Farundell, and Lord Litherbrow replied that the re¬ 
sources of civilization were not exhausted while 
Litherbrow remained unmortgaged, but that he pre¬ 
ferred the clean finish of a sale of Farundell. “I 




The Future of Far undell 197 


take it,” he wrote, “from your letter that Farun- 
dell is going to the dogs. I shall not insist on high 
breeding. But, if you please, no mongrels.” 

Eminently a reasonable reply and Mr. Edwardes 
lamented sincerely his failure to find a quick and 
desirable purchaser. The scuttlers who threw their 
property into the market at the first sight of need, 
had come off very well at the expense of the new 
rich, and he deplored the scurvy trick Fate played 
upon a man who had flown his flag till the broad¬ 
sides of taxation all but sank him. 

Then in the same week two inquirers called at his 
office and the first of these was Mr. Francis Bassett 
of Hanover Square and Walthamstow. 


Ill 

Mr. Edwardes blamed Fate for coming between 
Lord Litherbrow and possible buyers and with more 
justice might have blamed himself. He had his in¬ 
struction to be “tender” with Farundell, to be, that 
is to say, unobtrusive in his advertising and in his 
view the austere announcement, “Farundell for 
sale. Apply to the office of Mr. Edwardes,” said 
all there was to be said. 

So it did—to the people of Mr. Edwardes* clien¬ 
tele, only they, as he had told Lord Litherbrow, were 
all sellers. They read and said, “Farundell too!” 
with the air of a French aristocrat who, awaiting 
execution, hears his friend’s name called in the day’s 
list for the tumbrils. It was the common fate. 
Sooner or later, what did it matter! 




198 


The Wrong Shadow 


But, astonished as he would have been to hear it, 
Farundell conveyed nothing to the many moneyed 
people, not .of the clientele of Mr. Edwardes, who 
mispronounced Beauchamp or Harcourt and were un¬ 
acquainted with the hierarchy of the public schools. 
He hadn’t moved with the times. Everybody, he 
thought, knew of Farundell; everybody had knowl¬ 
edge of the recognized country houses as everybody 
had knowledge of the Oxford and Cambridge Col¬ 
leges. He thought his modest line stood out in digni¬ 
fied significance against the luscious geniality of the 
agents’ advertising: and that depended on the 
reader. 

Audrey, who with Gladys had been asked to keep 
an eye on the paper, called Bassett’s attention to 
the announcement. She had seen it before and she 
assumed that he had seen it: but their search dragged 
on and there was no harm in asking if he had con¬ 
sidered Farundell and, if not, why. 

‘‘This advertisement of Farundell still appears,” 
she said. 

“What? Oh, that small ad. Yes, I’ve seen that. 
Somebody who was born before advertising began, 
isn’t it? Putting in a line like that. Farundell! 
Sounds like a dud villa. Silly fools don’t even say 
where it is.” 

“But it’s in Suffolk,” she said. “I suppose they 
thought they didn’t need to say where Farundell 
is.” 

“Oh, do you know it?” 

“I know of it.” She had had, in other words, a 
father and if one is without doubt of the right people 
one uses their idiom carelessly; if there is doubt 




The Future of Far undell 199 


that one is authentically right, one uses the idiom 
carefully. Audrey had heard Colonel Evelow 
mention Farundell, carefully; it had a place in his 
gentleman’s gazetteer of England. 

“You mean,” he said, “that it’s a possibility for 
us?” 

“I thought you must have been there and rejected 
it.” He shook his head. “I expect it’s dreadfully 
costly.” 

“But is it right?” 

“Quite likely it’s too right.” 

He found it on his road-map. “Too right? Per¬ 
haps. But it’s hanging fire. I’ll see this Edwardes. 
He’s a fool at advertising hut he may have got the 
goods. And then we might run down there together, 
eh? I do value a woman’s eye on these occasions.” 

“A woman who’s a fool in Hampshire is still a 
fool in Suffolk, Mr. Bassett,” she said. “I—I can 
smell that dry-rot now.” 

“Then you’ll detect it next time. Of course I 
shall want you. We’ll go on Saturday.” 

Max had said to her, ‘ ‘ I think we shall be rehears¬ 
ing on Saturday afternoon. It’s not quite sure be¬ 
cause some of the people are still in other plays and 
they’ll have matinees. But I think we shall re¬ 
hearse, and if we do, will you come?” and she had 
said, “I don’t know. Perhaps.” 

But that was less than a promise to go to an oc¬ 
casion not quite definite. And she would like to see 
Farundell (in a way, it was her find); she liked the 
country air and country sights; there was Mr. Bas¬ 
sett who besides wanting her, besides asking her 
to go in the half authoritative, half beseeching tone 




200 


The Wrong Shadow 


of an employer calling for overtime service, beck¬ 
oned with the lure of an unsolved enigma. A re¬ 
hearsal with Max might be an interesting, and 
Farundell with Bassett an illuminating, experience. 

“I’ll hold myself free to go,” she said: if Hamp¬ 
shire had been recondite, perhaps Suffolk would be 
revealing. She had hopes of Farundell. 

Bassett, after seeing Edwardes, flew his most 
sanguine banner; once again he pictured himself the 
victor in a wrestle with a ghost. Edwardes, remind¬ 
ing himself that his first duty was to get a buyer, 
suppressed his doubts of Mr. Bassett as persona 
grata to Lord Litherbrow. He was formal about 
Farundell, but his dry description, combined with 
the formidable names on the deed-boxes in his office, 
proved infinitely more effective than the eulogies of 
the agencies. This, Bassett felt, was the real thing; 
he had come to the right place at last. And he had 
been directed there by Audrey. Something like a 
struggle for the peace of mind of Mr. Bassett be¬ 
gan to take hopeful shape; Audrey was sent to do 
battle for him with his Past; Maid Audrey, the cru¬ 
sader; Farundell the resolvent of his trouble. 

That might be no more than a high falutin way of 
saying that he was in love with her and wanted a 
clearance of his road to her. She was, no doubt, 
above him, and that she was unreachably above him 
was the basis of their house-hunting together, but 
even a basis can be re-considered sometimes; espe¬ 
cially love-times. 

And if he paid the great price which was asked 
for Farundell, surely that, added to the Canteen, 
would close the old account, surely the ghostly book- 




The Future of F at undell 201 


keeper would write “paid in full, expiated, released’’ 
against his name in the Black Ledger! That buoy¬ 
ant hope went in his mind quite conformably with 
the business-like intention not to pay the price Mr. 
Edwardes named. There would be, naturally, the 
cut and thrust of bargaining, and a considerable re¬ 
duction on a first quotation. Even so, the price of 
Farundell should figure as an all-sufficing sacrifice. 
To buy it and endow it would' take all of his hundred 
thousand. He was, bar working capital for Levia¬ 
than, stripping himself bare: and that should satiate 
the manes, that should send them, gorged, to their 
lair asleep for his lifetime. Imperishable hope! 

Lord Litherbrow read his solicitor’s letter about 
Bassett’s coming. Mr. Edwardes reminded his 
lordship that business was business, that money was 
business, that money was needed and that Mr. Bas¬ 
sett had money. “Plainly,” his lordship thought, 
“money is all he has. Well, I shall try.” He pre¬ 
scribed moderation for himself; he meant, honestly, 
to find Bassett satisfactory: he looked tolerantly at 
him when he came in and “Fit, anyhow,” he 
thought. “Keeps himself in condition. That’s 
something . 9 9 

But there was a lady with Mr. Bassett; he had not 
heard her announced, but, “And Mrs. Bassett?” he 
said, mentally approving the taste of his profiteer. 
Then he saw that Audrey was blushing; not wife but 
fiancee, he thought. 

“Miss Evelow, my secretary,” said Bassett and 
Lord Litherbrow bowed, and wondered why a man 
coming to look at a house should bring his secretary 
with him. Nice looking girl; small-boned; bred; a 




202 


The Wrong Shadow 


pity if—lie pulled himself together; he must be fair 
to Bassett; he mustn’t jump to conclusions; he 
mustn’t be prejudiced against Bassett because Bas¬ 
sett was rich enough to buy Farundell and he not 
rich enough to keep it. 

“My secretary is here,” Bassett explained as if 
he saw a question in Lord Litherbrow’s face, “be¬ 
cause if I come to terms with you, I am not buying 
Farundell for myself but for . . . for an idea.” A 
gesture, notably indefinite was supposed to supple¬ 
ment his words. 

Explicitness might come—it would in Lither¬ 
brow’s view have to come, and approvably, before 
he consented to sell Farundell for money and an 
“idea”—, but there was no hurry and “You will 
like to look round the house,” he said. 

“We are here for that purpose,” said Bassett. 

On its merits in design, decoration and furnish¬ 
ing, Farundell qualified as a show-place, but it had 
not, in fact, been shown, and Litherbrow, exhibiting 
to alien eyes the quiet beauty of the house he loved, 
felt damned for treachery. Rooms which would 
welcome him seemed to disdain an owner so inap- 
preciative that he could think for mere money to 
part with them to a stranger and he found it a peni¬ 
tential pilgrimage, eased only by Audrey’s gasps of 
praise. She gasped rightly, at the best things; she 
knew, and her knowledge was a mitigation. 

The very size of the rooms seemed, on the other 
hand, to oppress Bassett. There was, up to a point, 
no harm in a number of large rooms, but he sup¬ 
posed bedrooms to be places not for the drilling of 




The Future of Farundell 203 


a squad but to sleep in. Farundell bad its full com¬ 
plement of smaller rooms and perhaps these were 
where its early occupants slept snug in pre-ventila¬ 
tion days, but they had not reached them yet and if 
Farundell was not quite stately, its greater rooms 
on the first floor had a massive amplitude which sub¬ 
dued Bassett to the state of one who trembles naked 
in an open space. But it was precisely the magnifi¬ 
cence of Farundell which gave the place its fitness 
for his purpose; if it awed a little Bassett, it re¬ 
torted the more completely to a persistent ghost and 
he rallied from his melancholy. 

Farundell was the right reply because it was a 
large reply and ‘ ‘ Do you know, ’’ he said to Audrey, 
“I was actually worrying about the size of these 
rooms. They’re so big. But dormitories, eh? Two 
rows of beds. Or else cut up some of them into 
small rooms . 9 9 He glowed complacent in the happy 
thought. 

Lord Litherbrow suppressed a shudder. “Cut 
up?” he said. “Cut up Farundell, Mr. Bassett?” 
Then, as Bassett showed a sharp surprise, “I beg 
your pardon,” he apologized with a bow. “I was 
forgetting for the moment the circumstances of your 
visit. ” “ And therefore, ’ ’ he thought, * ‘ my vandal, 

you may be atrocious in words, but deeds are a dif¬ 
ferent and a preventible matter.” 

And Audrey said, quite as much to Lord Lither¬ 
brow as to Mr. Bassett whom she addressed, “Oh, I 
wouldn’t alter an inch of it. If you bring children 
here to live with health, you can let them also live 
with beauty. Perhaps they won’t know that good 





204 


The W r o n g Shadow 


air is good air, and perhaps they won’t know that a 
well-proportioned room is beautiful: but don’t you 
think that beauty tells?” 

“Children?” asked Litherbrow. “I hope I do 
not intrude, but is an orphanage in contemplation?” 
He had a sentiment for an orphanage if they were 
nice orphans, and if they weren’t he thought he could 
trust Farundell to confer niceness on them. 

“Something—well, institutional,” said Bassett. 
“Not necessarily for orphans; nearer a sanatorium 
but they needn’t be definitely ill when they come. 
Think me callous if you like, but no cripples for me. 
They can begin unfit, but they must be capable of 
ending fit. As to precisely who ‘they’ are, I can’t 
tell you for I don’t know. But,” he ended eagerly, 
“the aim is health.” 

“An admirable aim, Mr. Bassett.” 

“My life’s work,” he said piously. “As the pro¬ 
prietor of Leviathan Tonic, I—” 

“The ceiling in this room,” said Lord Lither¬ 
brow hurriedly, “has been considered exceptional.” 

One had to say something, one had not to say, 
“Good God.” Edwardes! Surely Edwardes had 
found out who this fellow was? Fellow who dam¬ 
aged landscapes with his outrageous hoardings. 
You saw his figure of a Strong Man stuck up in 
fields when you went by train. The farmer got 
something, he supposed, and he had a tenderness 
for farmers. But Farundell to go to an advertising 
quack, not even to live in, which would have been 
bad enough, but as a sort of stud-farm or a nursery 
garden where he would breed specimen exhibits of 
health and then display them as the results of tak- 




The Future of Farundell 205 


mg the egregious Tonic! The front door of Farun¬ 
dell was the only part of it he wished to show Mr. 
Bassett. 

Their attention had been directed to a ceiling con¬ 
sidered exceptional, and Audrey had something else 
to do than to admire a ceiling; she had a rescue to 
effect. “It should be made plain to Lord Lither- 
brow, I think, ’ ’ she said, 4 ‘ that the scheme you have 
in mind is a charity—” 

“But not a charity, Miss Evelow,” he protested. 

“Let me at least call it a benevolence. Something 
entirely apart from your business. When you men¬ 
tioned Leviathan, Lord Litherbrow mentioned the 
ceiling. That is why I mentioned the disconnection 
between your plan for a sanatorium and the Tonic.’’ 

“Miss Evelow,” said Lord Litherbrow, “I am 
indebted to you.” 

She looked at him. “You see,” she said, “I like 
Farundell.” 

“Thank you,” he said gravely. He accepted it 
from her that in her opinion the uses Bassett pro¬ 
posed for Farundell were not unworthy of the place 
and if he had in the event to oppose his opinion to 
hers, it would be as the opinion of an equal. Farun¬ 
dell had intimate significance for him, but they stood 
on common ground in their understanding of what 
Farundell, exquisitely, was. Yet Audrey, if a sur¬ 
prising secretary, was still only secretary to Bas¬ 
sett, and Bassett—! But he reprieved the notorious 
fellow; he wouldn’t kick out a man who, after all, 
had been sent by Edwardes, which showed pretty 
plainly what Edwardes thought things had come to; 
he would continue to display house, outhouses, 




206 


The Wrong Shadow 


grounds, to tlie last detail and if Mr. Bassett had any 
more devastating comments to make he would try to 
be patient with them. 

This remarkable secretary, whom, he hated to 
think, he had at first so fabulously misconstrued! 
Bassett gained half a pardon for being Bassett be¬ 
cause he had had the intelligence to bring Miss Eve- 
low with him. That was positively to his credit and 
negatively to his credit was the fact that, though he 
was Bassett, he hadn’t at every phrase “my lorded’’ 
Litherbrow. 

As they went on, there were fewer phrases from 
Bassett. Appreciations, warming because right, 
came from Audrey, and Bassett turned inscrutable. 
That wasn’t because he differed from her, it was 
because his mind was made up. Farundell was, ir¬ 
refutably, the expiation; it remained only to secure 
Farundell, and his salvation followed. A solemn 
thought, warped by anxiety. The bother was Lord 
Litherbrow, palpably a doubting salesman. 

They returned to the room where he had first re¬ 
ceived them. Audrey noticed, and Lord Litherbrow 
did not notice, that a telegram lay amongst the tea¬ 
cups. 

“And now,” said Bassett, “I want Farundell.” 
Impossible to say how much he wanted it and why; 
impolitic to praise Farundell in the presence of its 
seller, shy seller though he be! Simply he made the 
pregnant statement. He wanted Farundell, and 
Audrey signalled high approbation of the want. 

“Ah!” said Lord Litherbrow without enthusiasm. 
“I think I will ring for tea.” 

Tea! A trumpery intruder, trivial but ill-timed 




The Future of Far undell 207 


incongruity! Tea, when a man’s salvation was at 
stake. Or, more deliberately, was it, not uncon¬ 
scious bathos on Lord Litherbrow’s part, but calcu¬ 
lation? The soft answer that turneth away— 
wealth? Fearing it, he went on in a panic which 
abrogated business principles, “Of course, I raise 
no question as to price. I shall not try to bargain. 
The figure Mr. Edwardes mentioned is agreeable to 
me.” 

In a Bassett, Lord Litherbrow admitted, this was 
handsome; the fellow must have chaffering instincts. 
“And so have we all,” he thought; “I have myself. 
I am going to haggle now for an inviolate Farun- 
dell.” 

“You place me in some difficulty, Mr. Bassett. 
May I go on with the understanding between us that 
what I am about to say is said, in the legal phrase, 
1 without prejudice’? Let me first acknowledge the 
extreme good temper of what you have just said. I 
must seem to you, by contrast, ungracious for I have 
in the matter of Farundell to drive a bargain. A 
sale should be without conditions and I attach to the 
sale of Farundell the condition that Farundell shall 
remain as Farundell is. Some changes, I see, are 
vital to your purpose for it, and I shall not stand 
literally by my word that nothing shall be altered. 
Indeed, I had myself thought how suitable the house 
is for, as you put it, something institutional: and I 
won’t say that your use for it is not a higher one 
than mine has been. But one has, obstinately, one’s 
sense of the past. Use Farundell, sir, but don’t de¬ 
grade it. Don’t—what was your word?—don’t 
6 cut up’ its rooms.” 




208 


The Wrong Shadow 


A butler, who had brought in tea as he spoke, 
rather pointedly had not gone out. ‘ 4 Did you want 
something, Soames?” he asked. 

“The telegram, my lord. I didn’t send it after 
you while you went round the house. Is there a 
reply?” 

Litherbrow opened it, and there was no reply. 
There was no reply to its sender, Mr. Edwardes, but 
there was a reply to Mr. Bassett. “Mr. Bassett, 
you must grant me a little time. There are great 
merits in such a plan for Farundell as yours; there 
is, however, a break with tradition to which I cannot 
on the spur of the moment reconcile myself. And 
I ought frankly to add that another possible pur¬ 
chaser whom I have not yet seen, has called on Mr. 
Edwardes. Shall you resent it if I ask for a delay?” 

“You may be sure,” said Audrey, “that Mr. Bas¬ 
sett will not degrade Farundell.” 

“But permit me to remember, Miss Evelow, the 
state to which some country houses were reduced 
by being turned into convalescent hospitals during 
the war. A noble use for them, as Mr. Bassett has 
a noble use for this. But one parts so hardly with 
one’s prejudices.” He made a gesture. “I fear I 
talk in circles. Bear with my hesitations. Give 
me time in which to decide if, after all, Farundell 
must cease to be a private house.” 

To Bassett, Farundell’s desirability increased till 
the thought that he might lose it was a torture. 
Here, and he was not allowed to grasp it, was the 
veritable instrument of his salvation. Already he 
had violated business principles; now he went 




The Future of Farundell 209 


further; now, if he were to be fleeced outrageously, 
he must make a clenching bid. 

“If more money,” he began, and, “It is not a 
question of money,’’ said Litherbrow sharply. It 
was a question of prejudice in two degrees. The 
first (now that he came face to face with it) was the 
translation of his mother’s home into something 
useful, institutional, de-grading rather than degrad¬ 
ing, losing caste, graciousness, amenity. The sec¬ 
ond, tout court , was Mr. Bassett of the Tonic. 

For Audrey, too, a day of disappointment. They 
had confirmed, what she knew in advance, the fit¬ 
ness of Farundell. They had found their apt and 
seemly place, and the place swerved from them. 
Nor had she grown nearer to probing her mystery 
of Bassett. He might, in defeat, have shed the dis¬ 
guise which she felt him to have worn, for her, since 
the Hampshire adventure and he was instead im¬ 
penetrable. The car brought them towards London 
through a Constable landscape, backing to trees and 
the yellowing corn, through lonely, wind-swept 
marshes where cattle thrive, through the flat spa¬ 
ciousness of Suffolk and Essex which has, for all its 
flatness, the distances of moorland; and through it 
all he had no eye either for the country or for her. 
At intervals, with senseless, maddening iteration, he 
said “The telegram. What was in the telegram?” 

In the telegram was news of Mr. Edwardes’ elev¬ 
enth hour second string. “I advise against precipi¬ 
tate settlement with Bassett,” he wired. “Have to¬ 
day further applicant. American. Judge him de¬ 
sirable. ’ ’ 




CHAPTER ELEVEN 


‘‘ PETKOXELLE ’’ 

I 

* ^rjlHRIFT in its place/ ’ thought Audrey as she 
A spent the savings of many weeks on a dress 
which symbolized a gayety she might or might not 
have cause to feel. The point was to express, for 
the beholder, that it was a jocund thing to sit, on a 
first night, with an author in his box. For him she 
must make a brave show of it; in dress, in manner, 
she must be gay. If “Petronelle” succeeded, gayety 
was right and if it failed, perhaps even more right. 

Let her role in that box be bridesmaidenly or let 
it be that of chaplain with the prisoner in a con¬ 
demned cell, she did not shirk accepting it. She 
would be loyal to Max in the theater as she had been 
loyal to Bassett at Farundell. She felt herself the 
pivot of a see-saw on whose arms Max Peterkin and 
Frank Bassett rose alternately; they seemed to bid 
against each other for her attention, first one and 
then the other figuring in pungent circumstance. 

Well, she had been loyal to Bassett at Farundell. 
Lord Litherbrow had signaled, he had all but said, 
to her, “You are one of us; surely you perceive that 
this Bassett creature is an outsider V 9 and she had 
refused to be flattered, to be weaned from her guard¬ 
ianship of Bassett. Now it was the other’s turn: 

210 


“Petronelle” 


211 


him, too, she was to guard, and possibly from some¬ 
thing a great deal more disturbing than the polite 
depreciation of Lord Litherbrow. ‘ ‘Mercy on us, 
that God should give his favorite children, men, 
mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to 
promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage 
warmly, to counsel wisely, to sing with and to kiss 
with and that they should turn them into mouths of 
adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tem¬ 
pests, and emit breath through them like distilla¬ 
tions of aspic poison, to asperse and vilify the inno¬ 
cent labors of their fellow-creatures who are desir¬ 
ous to please them!” So Charles Lamb, on the 
Drury Lane audience that hissed his farce. Per¬ 
haps it wouldn’t, nowadays, be so frank a demon¬ 
stration, but if the verdict went against him she 
could, at least, be there to offer all the consolation 
possible. She could not stop his ears, but she could 
hold his hand. 

He had doubted if the theater was a faith of hers 
and he might have doubted it more since she had, 
through Bassett, been realizing how firm a hold the 
country had on her. She had made friends in Lon¬ 
don, she had thought herself acclimatized, and Lon¬ 
don, it was now clear, had not so surely conquered 
that it could not lose. London, as she came back to 
it from the country, looked strangely meretricious; 
there were earth, soil, the steadfastness of country 
sights and places, and there was the instability of 
streets; she had not doubted the inevitability of 
towns and now she knew that she did not bow the 
head without reserve beneath the glamorous yoke 
of crowded places. 




212 


The Wrong Shadow 


Max was of the town; his crowded hour, so soon 
to come, was definitely a London occasion; but she 
did not question his authentic right to the high end 
of the see-saw when he rose to the zenith of a first 
night of his own. She would bring him her loyalty, 
she would be jocund in her outward show: but as to 
her anticipations of jollity that night, they were ex¬ 
pressed by her attempt at the last moment to 
squeeze one of her souvenirs of the Colonel, his 
pocket-flask, into the toy handkerchief pocket of her 
opera cloak. Brandy medicinally was her thought, 
but her absurd pocket refused to take the flask. 
Then, morally, she must be gigantic in her strength: 
to what deep gulfs of misery, to what suicidal im¬ 
pulses might not his play’s failure reduce a man 
whom she first met trying to break a leg in mere 
defiance of Bassetts Tonic! She supposed she 
would be envied, sitting in the author’s box in an 
adequate frock. The irony of it! 

If she took the gloomy view, if she thought of his 
play so hopelessly as to fear that even their friends 
of the gallery would find their mercy strained to 
breaking point, it was not her fault but his. Max 
was in despair. 

Mr. Cammish had caught a Tartar—and had 
tamed him. The ideal author, Mr. Cammish held, 
was a deaf mute who had never been inside a the¬ 
ater and, being paralyzed, couldn’t come to re¬ 
hearsals of his play. An author’s job was finished 
when his play was written; after that, authors were 
mere nuisances, getting in the way of the man who 
knew. While Max, as a gallery first-nighter, knew 
how to manage a theater better than the manager 




“Petronelle” 


213 


and how to produce a play better than the producer. 
Apparently, the phrasing of his contract gave him 
some authority in the matter of casting his play, 
and he brought Mr. Cammish a cut and dried plan. 

“There’s my cast,” he said. “I hope you will 
agree with me.” 

Mr. Cammish accepted the document wearily and 
laid it on his desk. “As soon as I get time,” he 
said, “I’ll have a look at it.” He had settled the 
cast with his producer that morning; he might, at 
leisure, amuse himself by glancing at the fantastic 
notions of an author. 

“But surely,” Max persisted, “it’s the first thing. 
Now, for Petronelle” (who was Audrey), “I want 
Miss Anderdale.” 

* ‘ Anderdale ? Who’s she ? ’ ’ 

Max rattled off half a dozen small parts in which 
the lady had appeared. In united gallery opinion, 
she was an actress and it was time somebody recog¬ 
nized the fact by casting her for a leading part. 
Max, who wanted youth in his Petronelle, saw her, 
not as ideal (Petronelle being Audrey, that was im¬ 
possible), but as the nearest to his ideal it was 
humanly in reason to expect. 

“I won’t say,” said Mr. Cammish, “that I haven’t 
heard of her. Pretty little thing. But the public 
hasn’t heard of her.” 

“Then it’s time they did,” Max said hotly. 

“My dear hoy, don’t you think a new author is 
enough risk for one play to carry? Give it an un¬ 
known leading lady and God help you! As a matter 
of fact, I’ve persuaded Miss Castlemaine to do 
Petronelle.” 




214 


The Wrong Shadow 


The word “persuaded’’ was apposite. Miss Cas- 
tlemaine, by origin a shop-girl, declined to play hero¬ 
ines who were not in easy circumstances; if they 
were without titles, which happened occasionally, 
they must he ‘* county.’ 9 Incomes of five thousand a 
year must be indicated. She was an established 
London leading lady, and to play Petronelle was a 
condescension. The social status of Petronelle was 
indefinite. 

“But — 99 cried Max aghast. 

“Mr. Peterkin,” said Cammish, “I have had 
thirty-five years 9 experience in this business. I have 
the flair. Believe me, I put the author’s interest 
first. I call myself an author’s manager. It's pos¬ 
sible that little What ’s-her-name would act Castle- 
maine off the stage. But this cast has got to look 
right on the posters as well as on the stage. The 
public’s heard of Castlemaine. It likes Castlemaine 
and—” 

“She’s all wrong for this part,” Max protested. 

“We,” said Mr. Cammish confidentially, “may 
know that. But the public won’t. Not,” he went on 
as Max showed signs of rebellion, “with such a play 
as yours. Some plays leave a great deal to be done 
by the actors. But yours—you’ve done it all for 
them. This play of yours, sir, is actor-proof. ’ ’ And 
flattery, he held, could not be too gross. 

“You’re thinking more of the posters than the 
play,” said Max, and privately Mr. Cammish 
thought that the posters were likely to live longer 
than the play. 

“Oh, my boy,” he said, “that isn’t true. That’s 
hitting below the belt.” He was a most wronged 




“Petronelle” 


215 


person. 44 Now, just to show you,” he took up the 
cast Max had suggested. 44 Ah! I knew it. This 
small part here. You cast Walter Kershaw. His 
salary is fifty pounds a week! And again, here 
you’ve got Miss Enderby.” 

“Well? She isn’t in anything at the moment,” 
said Max. “And she’s a jolly good little actress.” 

“She’s going to have a baby,” said Mr. Cammish 
triumphantly. “I’m sorry to have to point these 
things out, Mr. Peterkin. I could point to more, but 
if I told you the truth about your cast, I should only 
hurt your feelings. You see, we know. We don’t 
hold the positions we do hold in the theater without 
having earned them. Now, I’ll show you the cast 
you’re going to have. Balanced. Competent peo¬ 
ple. Big parts by people the public knows. Bight. ’ ’ 

Max argued every one of them. They seemed to 
him as wrong as they could be. “And,” said Mr. 
Cammish, untruthfully, “they have all had their 
contracts.” 

“Already?” 

“We don’t waste time in the theater.” 

“You present me with a fait accompli? Is that 
how you read that clause in my contract about 
cast?” 

“Bead it again, Mr. Peterkin. It contains the 
word ‘reasonable.’ You have no reasonable objec¬ 
tion to any one of my selections. ’ ’ 

Then, again, efficiency. They held in the gallery 
that the theater was rotten with inefficiency, and the 
technical workers he watched seemed to him of ter¬ 
rifying skillfulness. Certainly the actors, especially 
the small-part actors, were irritatingly slow at 





2 l6 


The Wrong Shadow 


learning their parts, but why should they hurry 
when rehearsals were to last a month? It drove him 
furious that he could always prompt more alertly 
than the prompter, that he knew the whole play by 
heart while actors with a few lines to speak still 
read them from the book. Why didn’t they get on 
with it? Why wouldn’t they let him see his play as 
a whole? His words grew meaningless to him 
through sheer monotony of repetition; it was un¬ 
thinkable that anyone should ever be moved, that 
anyone could laugh, at this weary stuff. It was the 
pace that killed and made dead ashes of his burning 
words. They snuffed his light out and he hadn’t, 
by the time they went straight through the play, 
the least idea if they spoke his words rightly or 
wrongly. As for Miss Castlemaine, they weren’t his 
words at all, but a dashing paraphrase that ended 
often quite irrelevantly to what had gone before by 
giving, with the air of a brilliant conjuring trick, the 
right cue. 

The prompter did not intervene and Mr. Cam- 
mish sat, tolerant, in the stalls. “You can’t drive 
Castlemaine,” he said. 

“Then why cast her?” cried Max. 

“Oh, my boy, she’s a bad rehearser. That’s all. 
You’ll see. Word-perfect on the night.” While he 
bullied into violent hysterics a minor actress who 
transposed two sentences, and Max began to have 
some knowledge of what it means in the theater to 
be a star, to have the God-sent gift of personality. 
Only, he thought, the Castlemaine’s was not the 
right personality. They lavished indulgence on an 




“ Petrone11e” 


217 


actress who was killing his play. 4 ‘The critics will 
rave about her,” Mr. Cammish assured him. “They 
always do.” She was a cliche, and Max preferred 
acting. 

The actors as a whole did not disguise their con¬ 
viction that they were engaged on a forlorn hope. 
“Afraid it’s above their heads, Mr. Peterkin,” was 
their gentle way of putting it. 

“They don’t like it?” said Cammish. “That’s a 
good sign.” Privately, he agreed with the actors’ 
opinion, but he had to keep his bargain with Olga, 
he had to sustain the pretense that he had taken the 
play on its merits. “Actors have no intelligence. 
If they had,” he swelled his chest, “they would be 
managers.” 

In costume, his play looked stranger still to him, 
though he had to grant that the top-dressing of 
make-up plausibly concealed the ravages of Miss 
Castlemaine’s maturity. But he had seen the cos¬ 
tumes in his mind and he had described on paper 
what he had seen. An artist loyally designed from 
his descriptions and the designs, if they were not 
quite as he had imagined them, were passed. A cos¬ 
tumier made from the designs and, again, he 
couldn’t say that the making was at fault. But the 
costumes, as he saw them on the stage, were hardly 
colorable imitations of the costumes he had men¬ 
tally designed. They were not his costumes, the 
people in them were not his people, the play was 
not his play. It had passed through the ritual of 
production and emerged battered, cut, hopeless. 
They had cut his noblest lines, they had neutralized 





218 


The Wrong Shadow 


liis purple patches, they had diluted his passion. 

Mr. Cammish glistening with dress rehearsal op¬ 
timism came to congratulate him. “It’s a cinch,” 
he said and i ‘ It’s a bloody eunuch, ’ ’ said the author. 
“Ah, nerves, nerves!” said Mr. Cammish kindly. 
“Wait till tomorrow night. And after that you’ll 
be able to get away to Monte Carlo while I, poor I, 
am holding the fort here. You’re lucky people, you 
authors. Nothing to do but draw fees. The wide 
world open to you. Checks chasing you wherever 
you go.” 

Max rallied sufficiently to thank the man who (he 
thought) had ventured a considerable capital on his 
play, and went home to a desperate night. But he 
rose calm, on the serene side of despair and went 
about his daily job at Bassett’s without conscious 
strain. His emotions were numbed. Dully he faced 
the music, certain that he knew in advance all there 
was to know of the discord to come. 

Mr. Cammish knew it too. A fellow-practitioner 
came up to him at the club and “Well, Babbington,” 
he asked in that place wdiere first names (not always 
Christian names) were the vogue, “what is it this 
time ? ’ ’ 

“The only certain thing,” replied Mr. Cammish 
oracularly, “about a play that hasn’t faced an audi¬ 
ence is that all is uncertain. ’ ’ 

“You don’t say!” said the other. “You game¬ 
some Hotspur! You don’t ooze confidence.” 

“Are you looking for a theater, Bill? I think I 
could name one that wall be to let tomorrow morn¬ 
ing.” 

It was not the mood of Harry Hotspur. 




“ P e t r o n e 11 e ” 


219 


II 

A theater box gives cover; that was, for Max, the 
principal difference between a box and the dock of 
a criminal court. He shrank behind its curtain while 
Audrey gallantly exposed herself; one does not, if 
one is loyal, promote the belief that there is an 
empty box in the house. 

“ Preening herself / 9 said Olga, sitting with her 
husband in the stalls. “That woman in the box.” 

He used his monocle. ‘ 4 Oh, I don’t know. Carries 
it off. Second handsomest woman in the house.” 

The first woman in the house squeezed his arm 
gratefully. “Thank you for that,” she said, “and 
for all.” She dismissed Audrey to the paradise of 
fools. She had herself the bitter-sweetness of her 
power behind the throne. Let Audrey have the 
limelight and her front seat in the author’s box; 
Olga was hostess of them all. They might have 
come, especially those who were there professionally, 
with bored anticipations to a new man’s play, but, 
and perhaps Miss Castlemaine had more to do with 
it than Max suspected, they had also come socially: 
she was their convoker, she, Olga, had cried “Duc- 
dame” and they had come at her call. 

“Some feather in your cap,” he said, looking at 
the glittering house. “I wish you’d wear it. I wish 
you’d tell. ’ ’ 

“No, no! Never.” Stripped of its vanities, it 
gave young Max his chance: if patrons sought pub¬ 
licity, the worse patrons they: she stayed behind the 
throne. But she hoped it was a throne; her ano- 




220 


The Wrong Shadow 


nymity might shelter her from others, it would not 
shelter her from herself if the throne turned out to 
be a ducking-stool. 

In fifteen minutes after the curtain rose, Mr. Cam- 
mish knew. Other experts might have their hesita¬ 
tions, they might qualify their “Yes” with, “Can 
he keep it up?” But Mr. Cammish knew that the 
play did not collapse, and standing at the back of 
the circle watching a hushed audience which did not 
lounge, he knew that that night marked the arrival 
of Max Peterkin. “Petronelle” might or might not 
be a popular success, but it was a first night success. 
Did he regret the precipitancy with which he had 
croaked in his club? Not a bit of it. Old Downy 
knew; he kept his card up his sleeve, he sprang a 
surprise; cunning showman, old Downy. Marvelous 
how he spotted them! 

Max hardly dared to know, he hardly cared to 
know. At what were they sitting taut, for what rea¬ 
son these low happy gurgles of appreciation, these 
bursts of laughter? Couldn’t the fools see how in¬ 
adequate Miss Castlemaine was? Never had she 
seemed less like his Petronelle. Her words, indeed, 
were less a paraphrase of his than at the earlier re¬ 
hearsals, but, Lord, she fluffed! Probably nobody 
but himself heard the prompter’s voice—skillful 
chap that prompter: needed to be—but, would the 
luck hold? Would the Castlemaine get through? 
And, clearly, they were liking her. The black¬ 
hearted fellow had a morose contempt for this au¬ 
dience which found a vivid meaning in words that 
had turned gibberish for him. So often they were 
not his words and when they were what was 





" P etr one lie” 


221 


there in their stupid staleness that could move? 

But something moved his audience and sitting in 
that box so near the stage he had a sense of being 
physically assaulted by the fierce beating of applause 
when the act ended. “Nine curtains, Max,” Audrey 
recorded. “Nine!” 

“Only our friends upstairs playing up.” 

“Bot,” she said. “It’s you. You,” she curled 
him up by saying, “and Miss Castlemaine. Isn’t 
she terrific?” 

Mr. Cammish came into the box. An omission 
from their contract, natural in the circumstances of 
its making, had come into his mind. “Well?” asked 
Max. “Only friendly applause, eh?” 

“I don’t judge by applause,” said Cammish. 
“Look here, you’ll do the fair thing by me, won’t 
you? I want first refusal of your next play. If I 
bring a little paper round after the next act, you 
won’t refuse to sign it.” 

“My next!” he gasped. “Why . . . then . . . 
then ...” 

“Don’t you know success when you see it?” asked 
Cammish and ‘ ‘ Max! ’ ’ said Audrey. 

“Your play, Audrey. Yours,” he said and cov¬ 
ered his face with his hands. A callous crust had 
formed over his sensibilities? Well, it was broken 
now. Cammish wanted his next play—he should 
have it of course: fair was fair—but this . . . suc¬ 
cess . . . success . . . Audrey. His brain whirled. 

Somebody standing in the stalls below their box 
was audible. “We know these good first acts,” was 
the genial sneer. 

It helped Max; it steadied him; they were not out 





222 

5 


The Wrong Shadow 


of the wood. A good first act and then a steep de¬ 
scent to zero? Yes, indeed, he knew that sort of 
play; he wasn’t a first-nighter for nothing, and 
though he thought “Petronelle” went up, act by 
act, to a climax, there was nothing certain until an 
audience endorsed that view. 

4 ‘ All right, Cammish , 9 ’ he said. ‘ 4 If you ’re in the 
same mood after the next act, I’ll sign.” 

“ Thanks. I must go to congratulate Miss Castle- 
maine now. She’s making the success of her 
career.” 

“She always does,” said Max, the unforgiving. 
“Ask her when she thinks she’ll know her part.” 

A bland smile, like the Cheshire Cat’s, lingered in 
the space Mr. Cammish had occupied. 

Ill 

He tried—it was almost a point of honor—-to be 
faithful to his pessimism, and, indeed, during the 
second act there were moments when he cursed the 
audience not for taking his points too early but for 
failing to take them at all. For two minutes, which 
is a long time in a play, disaster threatened, but the 
accumulated goodwill standing to his credit from 
the first act drove him over a perilous bar into har¬ 
bor. He had not written a full-fledged masterpiece, 
but an audience once charmed is slow to confess to 
disenchantment. Crowd psychology may make a 
beast, but usually a lovable beast. The act survived 
its dangerous moments; Miss Castlemaine continued 
with experienced technique to make the success of 
her career; and a recovery in the last act, well sus- 




“Petronelle” 


223 

# 


tained, put the final verdict beyond possibility of 
doubt. Max hadn’t the perversity to profess now 
that he was not a victor; on the contrary, he asserted 
that he was. 

He touched Audrey’s arm. ‘‘Come out into the 
passage,” he whispered. “We can’t talk here.” 

“But—” she protested with a genuine impatience 
at any interruption of this play which held her. 

“Oh, you can see the damned thing any time. 
Come out.” He spoke aloud, carelessly. “Come,” 
he repeated, and indignant hushings from the stalls 
both paid him a high compliment and persuaded 
Audrey to obey this author who seemed capable of 
interrupting his own play. 

“What is it?” she asked as he closed the door of 
the box behind them. “How can you, Max? Mak¬ 
ing it look as if I’d turned the show up in disgust. 
And on a first night.” 

“The show’s all right,” he said. 

“Our manners aren’t. Let me go back.” 

“You’ll be in at the finish. But, Audrey, have you 
nothing to say to me?” 

‘ ‘ That I’m glad! Of course. But that can wait. ’ ’ 
Her hand was at the door, and he took her wrist. 

< 1 And I can’t wait, ’ ’ he said. “ Wait ? Why wait ? 
Isn’t the thing here now? The play I wrote of you 
visibly arriving on the other side of that door. 
Standing on its hind-legs and just defying them to 
say it isn’t good. This is my moment, Audrey, 
and—” 

“Oh, why will you be a dramatist in life?” 

“I’m what I am and we’ve had all that out. I 
never said life with me was going to be easy. But, 






224 


The Wrong Shadow 


damn it, I’ve climbed. I’ve climbed to you and if 
you’re not for me now I’m at my top, it’s a pretty 
sick look-out for me when I’m not at the top. Can’t 
we admit we’ve reached the end of our doubt, my 
dear? I suppose I’m going on to that stage in a 
minute to take a call. Can’t I go a thousand times 
greater than the man who only wrote this play? 
Can’t I go with your kisses on my lips? I didn’t 
write for them. For you. They’ll make their row 
and you ...” 

“I shall be cheering too.” 

“One of the crowd. Pretending you’re a drop in 
the ocean when you are the ocean.” 

She shrank from him. To go on the stage, as he 
said, with her kisses on his lips! They would not 
show, but she had a horror that they would. For 
her, they would show—her first kisses given in thisi 
moment of his triumph—and it seemed to her all 
wrong. She would feel as if dragged with him on 
the stage, paraded in his procession and love . . .. 
when he had said, “I’ve been domestic up to now,” 
she had replied, “Isn’t that where love belongs?” 
It did not belong, at any rate, with these garish 
lights and the hectic minutes of a first night recep¬ 
tion. 

He did not need her now, a man alone with the 
public celebration of his work. It was pretense to 
say he needed her. It was almost patronizing. Be¬ 
hind, she had her second line of defense against him; 
she had Bassett, her still provoking riddle, but she 
needed no defense from the reserves; Max was rush¬ 
ing her, he was trying to build their lives upon an 
ovation of the theater, and she was not to be rushed., 




“ P e tr o n elle” 


225 


i 6 I’ll go back to the box now,” she said. “I’ve 
nothing more to say.” 

“Audrey!” He read no coquetry in her and no 
relenting. He had the humiliation of remembering 
again his physical inferiority. He might be at his 
top, but his top was likely to be dragged in the dust, 
and his dress-coat with it if he essayed to emulate 
Petruchio. But perhaps there was another way. 

He tried it. “Have you no pity, Audrey?” he 
asked. 

She eyed him candidly, and had no pity for him. 
He was playwright by choice; he saw the theater, 
not coolly as Audrey did, but as a lover sees; and 
tonight he had conquered the theater. “Can this 
cockpit hold the vasty fields of France?” For him, 
it held a world and that world was at his feet. She 
saw no occasion to pity him. “Yes, Max, I have 
pity,” she said, “when pity is required.” She left 
him in the passage and returned to the box, a magic 
casement through which his play at once re-cap¬ 
tured her with an ease that was almost insolent. 

That is why a young man shot bare-headed past 
the attendants into the night; that is why a vehe¬ 
ment audience was left frustrate when it called “Au¬ 
thor” at the end of “Petronelle” and why Audrey 
found herself the embarrassed custodian of the 
author’s hat and coat and a difficult witness under 
fire of Mr. Cammish’s indignant questions. An ab¬ 
sentee author offended his sense of decent showman¬ 
ship and though Miss Castlemaine stepped into the 
breach and took call after call with smiling heroism, 
“They’ve seen her smile before,” Mr. Cammish said 
veraciously. 




226 


The Wrong Shadow 


Perhaps, if a Walthamstow ’bus had not happened 
to pass the theater door as he ran out, Max would 
have gone back. But, once on the top of the bus, 
inviting pneumonia, a striking figure in exposed 
evening dress, he did not get down. He had the 
perverse pleasure of one who irritates an open 
wound, and if he caught pneumonia he thought, 
childishly, “she’ll be sorry when I’m dead.” And 
by the time this mood had passed, it was too late to 
go back, and he mentally wrote for his memoirs the 
story of how Max Peterkin, the great author, rode 
away from his first call on the top of a 38 Waltham¬ 
stow ’bus. He decided that he could make an amus¬ 
ing passage of this example of the pleasing eccen¬ 
tricity of the famous. 

When, finally, he got down, he noticed that the 
“streamer” on one side of the ’bus advertised 
“Petronelle.” It helped him to sustain the gaze of 
a policeman. Young men in his costume are rarely 
seen in the streets of Walthamstow where evening 
dress, if worn occasionally, is hidden like a crime, 
and hoping to find a double strength of moral sup¬ 
port, he went round to look at the other side of the 
’bus. It proclaimed Leviathan Tonic! 

A conspicuous figure stood in the middle of Hoe 
street shaking its fist at a retreating ’bus. The 
policeman crossed hurriedly. “Hadn’t you better 
be getting home, sir?” he suggested. 

“Eh?” The famous Mr. Peterkin considered it. 
He considered a night in the cells as a sequel to Aud¬ 
rey’s brutality. He might, for instance, hit the 
policeman’s nose. And then he remembered the 
memoirs, and the dignity of the theater, and the dif- 




“ P etronelle” 


227 


ference between a charming eccentricity and a cheap 
notoriety. ‘ ‘ Do you know,’’ he said, ‘ ‘ I think I had. 
Good night.’’ 

The lost disreputability of authorship! This 
wasn’t Elizabethan: it wasn’t even early Victorian. 
They’d have had their fun with the watch. But Max 
went to bed and—slept. He was in arrears with 
sleep and his last thought was not of Audrey nor of 
“Petronelle.” It was that when he was called in 
the morning, he would turn round and go to sleep 
again. He had finished with Bassett’s. 

IV 

A good theater manager is, amongst other things, 
a manufacturer of first night success, and the other 
good managers at the Club were not unduly im¬ 
pressed by the whoopings of Mr. Cammish, sup¬ 
ported though he was by people who had been pres¬ 
ent. They had had first nights of their own; they 
had planted primroses in the path themselves and 
mentally deodorized the flowers of Mr. Cammish. 
A well-dressed window was all to the good, but 
would the public come into the shop to buy and, 
more immediately, would the Libraries come in? 

The “Libraries” are the theater ticket agencies, 
formidable sign-posts to theatrical managers. Their 
advisers are not concerned with the merits 
of a play, nor with a play’s relationship to the art 
of the theater; they watch plays with a single eye 
to popularity. Will the public want it? And if their 
reply is “Yes,” it becomes worth their while to 
speculate. 




228 


The Wrong Shadow 


In any case, they charge a booking-fee over and 
above the nominal price of a seat. But they do not 
always pay the nominal price to the theater. If their 
connoisseurs of popularity predict demand, they buy 
seats in bulk from the theater for cash at a reduc¬ 
tion of ten per cent, and it is the manager’s interest 
to let them buy, since, having bought, the agencies 
must sell and become so many propagandists of the 
play. They are canny people, not often to be 
“landed” with unsalable seats. The public which 
relies on their advice is wealthier than that other 
public which relies on the advice of the girl in charge 
of a book circulating library. 

Max read the newspapers with avidity; but Mr. 
Cammish, having assured himself that the critics 
had put up no positive barrage between their read¬ 
ers and this play, had no interest in detailed criti¬ 
cism and waited for the word of the Libraries. 

When Max went into the theater at noon, expect¬ 
ant of a wigging for desertion, he found no wigging 
for him: he found a super-genial Mr. Cammish who 
had sold many blocks of seats for three months 
ahead over the telephone to the Libraries. Mr. 
Cammish’s anxieties were limited to the question 
either of extending his present lease or of securing 
a theater to which, when his lease ended, to transfer 
the successful play, “ Petronelle. ” 

The telephone bell rang, and Mr. Cammish, after 
a moment’s conversation, covered the transmitter 
with his hand. He looked with awe at Max. “Pe- 
terkin, ’ ’ he whispered, ‘ ‘ America! ’ ’ 

“Well,” he said loftily into the telephone, “yon 
can tender for it if you like.” 




CHAPTER TWELVE 


THE MAN FROM IPSWICH 

I 

B EFORE a favorable first impression goes the 
will to be favorably impressed. The wax needs 
to be prepared, and Mr. Edwardes’ telegram, fol¬ 
lowed by a letter of strongly persuasive intention, 
put Lord Litherbrow in the mood to like his second 
applicant better than his first. The more he thought 
about Bassett and Bassett’s plan to quarter a small 
army of children at Farundell, the less reconciled he 
grew to the inevitable adaptations of his house. 

Mr. Herbert Wyler, at any rate, wanted a house, 
not a shell of bricks and mortar whose interior was 
to be organized, and since half the British peerage 
was subsidized by American business, the phrase ‘ 6 a 
wealthy American business man” had lost the detri¬ 
mental significance which might, fifty years ago, 
have been attached to it. Nor did Mr. Wyler, when 
he came, disappoint expectation. 

He was tall, and his clothes made Litherbrow feel 
that he was himself dressed like a gamekeeper, that 
robes and a coronet rather than tweeds and a soft 
collar were the correct costume in which to receive 
this American who wore a dandy’s raiment with a 
disarming air of virile nonchalance. And Mr. Wy¬ 
ler, though American, made no foolish comments as 

229 


230 


The Wrong Shadow 


they went round the house together; possibly be¬ 
cause he made very few comments at all. 

His silence, in the preempted opinion of Lord 
Litherbrow, was intelligent and even considerate: 
it seemed to him to say, “Farundell is exquisite, but 
I should be less than kind were I to praise it to the 
face of the man who is under necessity of parting 
with it”—a sympathetic silence due to delicacy, 
when the several points about it were rather that 
silence was a trusted defense of Mr. Wyler, that he 
was nervous in the presence of Lord Litherbrow 
and democratically annoyed with himself for being 
nervous and finally that in business a buyer does not 
talk up the wares but leaves that duty to the seller. 

This was not all, it was by no means all. Lord 
Litherbrow facing the thought of Farundell as 
“something institutional” had been moved to re¬ 
pugnance by the sense of the past. A similar sense 
moved Herbert Wyler now, to his discomfort. In 
affairs he had crossed swords with bigger men than 
Litherbrow and he had not often been worsted. But 
—he was born at Ipswich, and Ipswich was market 
town of the Farundell country. When he found that 
Olga liked England, he had the idea, not by any means 
of settling in England, but of buying an English 
home for reasons of his own and, tremendously by 
preference for a Suffolk man, a Suffolk home. He 
found that Farundell was in the market, Farundell 
a land-mark of his boyhood; he would surprise Olga 
by buying Farundell and by watching her when he 
told her how this great house of his county had 
loomed on his young horizon, how trifling such an 
acquisition was to him now—a British annex to their 




The Man From Ipswich 231 


American homes. And, somehow, at Farundell the 
view that it was trifling faded and the view that 
Bertie Wyler of Ipswich was a trespasser and an 
impostor to be there on equal terms with Lord Lith- 
erbrow, grew insuppressibly peremptory. 

His nervousness increased and his sense that in 
the wide spaces of the world Herbert Wyler was 
somebody moved him, though he feared his fluency, 
to attempt some self-assertion before this home¬ 
keeping peer. Silence would not do and he need not 
brandish superlatives, but some twisting of the 
lion’s tail (Litherbrow as a lion!) had become a 
psychological necessity. 

Farundell had had a cellar once; to lay down port 
had been something approximating to a religious ex¬ 
ercise with Litherbrow’s maternal grandfather, but 
Farundell, as Litherbrow’s asylum, had not needed 
the added flavor of exceptional grape and most of 
the residue had gone, escorted by Lady Litherbrow’s 
pious wine-merchant, to the London house. But 
some remained, awaiting its occasion and Mr. Wyler 
so won by silence upon Litherbrow as to be regarded 
as an occasion. A passing servant was instructed 
in whispers to tell Soames to bring out a bottle; its 
cobwebbed ruby flanked the apparatus of the after¬ 
noon drink of a later age on the table. 

“Tea, Mr. Wyler? or, if I may say so, this wine 
is good. I think we might—” 

‘ 4 May I have tea ? ’ 9 

The character of this wine suggested to Lither¬ 
brow that to press it on his guest was no breach 
of courtesy. “In preference,” he smiled, “to the 
Farundell port?” 




232 


The Wrong Shadow 


“I come from a country which has other views/’ 

(1 Yes,” said Litherbrow wonderingly. “Yes, of 
course.” He poured tea. 

“To you, to your country,” said Mr. Wyler, “pro¬ 
hibition is a jest.” Litherbrow made a gesture. “I 
don’t lay down the law for others. But I was drunk 
once and the horror and the shame of that black epi¬ 
sode changed my whole life. I was within inches of 
going down to the pit of degradation and instead I 
went to America.” 

“Indeed!” said Lord Litherbrow, who felt called 
upon to say something appropriate. “Indeed.” 

A thumb-nail sketch of his career from that night 
of humiliation to his present as prospective owner 
of Farundell seemed to Herbert Wyler apt to his 
purpose of impressing Lord Litherbrow. “Yes, my 
lord,” he said, “I am a Suffolk man.” 

“Suffolk, U.S.A.?” asked Litherbrow, who re¬ 
membered an historic Norfolk in Virginia but 
couldn’t recall an American Suffolk, and, in any 
case, missed the connection between Suffolk and pro¬ 
hibition. Was Suffolk a place-name or a man’s? 
Had Mr. Suffolk been a Cromwell of the prohibition 
campaign and (for surely Wyler spoke with pride) 
was this American one of Suffolk’s lieutenants? 
Was Suffolk, like Boston, a state of mind? 

“Suffolk, England. I was born at Ipswich.” 

1 ‘ Oh! Then you are not American by birth. ’ ’ 

“I am American by conviction,” said Mr. Wyler, 
and Lord Litherbrow heartily wished he had not 
said anything so disconcerting, so tending to a re¬ 
consideration of the excellent opinion he had formed 
of Mr. Wyler. An American was a natural phe- 




The Man From Ipswich 233 


nomenon, but a man who gave np his birthright of 
being English was nothing; an abnormality, a mon¬ 
ster. 6i To pass,” went on the unconscious Wyler, 
i 1 from that night when I was bestial and to reach a 
Dry State! ” A transition, one was asked to recog¬ 
nize, from hell to heaven. “ Possibly, my lord, the 
prohibition at which you smile was more complete in 
the Dry States than it now is under Federal Law. 
When a man knew he had only to cross a border into 
a Wet State, he was, perhaps, less inclined to break 
his State law than he is now when there are no bor¬ 
ders but Mexico and Canada. I do not know. I have 
been absent from home for some time. But I know 
that prohibition meant what it purports to mean 
where I went straight from landing in New York. 
America is a large place; America means this to one 
man and that to another. To me, it meant a clean 
start in a clean place, to me, nationalization as an 
American meant the citizenship of a Prohibition 
State. To you, this is eccentricity; you can use alco¬ 
hol with moderation. I have proved that I cannot, 
and to me prohibition is a faith. Let me add,” he 
said with a smile which almost persuaded Lither- 
brow to like him again, ‘ i that my wife is not of the 
same religion. I am only fanatical for myself.” 

And so well-dressed! So extraordinarily well- 
dressed ! Lord Litherbrow felt that it was irrational 
to be well-dressed and a prohibitionist. A prohibi¬ 
tionist should be a figure of caricature, something 
in a frock-coat drawn by Cruickshank out of Dickens. 
This was very un-English. 

But of course it was un-English; it was American 
and the fellow had the grace, in his last words, to be 




234 


The Wrong Shadow 


humorous about it. An Ipswich man going out into 
the world, under spur of whatever cause, and doing 
uncommonly well! Ought he to resent, ought he not 
rather to admire him? But, confound him, he had 
become an American citizen. Understandable in a 
Pole; even in an Irishman. But an Englishman? 
“The fellow’s a renegade/’ he thought. “National¬ 
ity doesn’t come by conviction; it comes by birth.’’ 
And Wyler was not apologizing; when he said he had 
been absent from home for some time, America was 
the home he meant; he was proud of it; he gloried 
in his renegation. 

“ . . . Taught me all I know about oil and I think I 
know as much as most people. You see he came 
originally from Baku.” Baku? Russia? What on 
earth had that to do with it? Mr. Wyler, in fact, had 
been getting on with his saga, while Lord Lither- 
brow pondered prohibition and nationality. He was, 
it seemed, talking about a Russian-born American 
oil magnate whose daughter Mr. Wyler had mar¬ 
ried ; it sounded a long way from a drunken night in 
England, and Lord Litherbrow had missed the inter¬ 
vening steps; important, no doubt, to Wyler, and 
very likely creditable to him, but of small interest to 
Litherbrow. 

He cleared his throat. “Er . . . yes, Mr. Wyler, 
yes. But I wish you would answer me one ques¬ 
tion. ’ ’ 

“As many as you like. I expect I’ve used too 
many oil technicalities. I’m apt to do that.” 

“No. Not about oil. Tell me, having become an 
American, why do you want Farundell?” 

He thought it a shrewd question and indeed Wyler 




The Man From Ipswich 235 


seemed taken aback by it. “And so much,” Lither- 
brow thought, “for your American convictions, for 
your home in America. When you want a real home 
you come back to England for it.” But Lither- 
brow was wrong; Mr. Wyler was not looking for a 
home. 

“I want Farundell,” he said, “because of my 
wife, 3 ’ and Litherbrow thought worse still of him 
for making that excuse, so venerable, so transpar¬ 
ent. The man from Ipswich wanted Farundell to 
gratify his vanity, and lacked the courage to say so. 
“You see, when my battalion was ordered overseas, 
my wife wanted to be as near me as possible and I 
managed to get her to England. There wasn’t the 
same difficulty about women traveling across in ’15 
as there was later on.” 

7 15? Lord Litherbrow did not want to cross- 
examine, but an American battalion which was or¬ 
dered overseas in 1915 struck him as an anachro¬ 
nism. “ ’15?” he said, “or later?” 

Mr. Wyler looked embarrassed. “You’ll think,” 
he said fiercely, “that I take my American citizen¬ 
ship lightly. I don’t. But one had to do something 
at once and they took my word that I was British 
and let me get into the Canadian forces. There were 
lots more Americans did the same. ’ ’ 

“My dear sir!” said Lord Litherbrow, and Wyler 
looked Surprised at his warmth. It was Lither¬ 
brow ; s Spoken apology for his unspoken “rene¬ 
gade.” Mr. Wyler had come back most, if not all 
of the way into his lordship’s estimation. Natural¬ 
ization, impulsive; enlistment, racial; was Lither¬ 
brow’s summing up. 





236 


The Wrong Shadow 


“ And,” Wyler went on, 4 ‘my wife likes England. 
It’s sentimental,” lie excused her. “You see, our 
boy was born here .’ 9 

“Then he’s English,” said-Litherbrow in triumph. 

‘ ‘ At present,’ 9 said Wyler dryly. “ I ’m . . . wqII, 
one’s wife ... if I may say so, one’s exceptional 
wife . . . the fact is, I’ve put the boy down for 
Eton, but that’s precautionary. That’s to please my 
wife. We return very soon to America. I hope I 
don’t bore you with a small domestic difference!” 

“Not at all. You, on the other hand, must pardon 
my curiosity.” 

“I have interests in America. We go there and 
I say we stay there. Olga fights for England. It 
is not my intention to give in: but my wife is a beau¬ 
tiful woman. I admit to you that where she is con¬ 
cerned my strength of will is not to be relied upon. 
But you have possibly noticed in your own experi¬ 
ence of women that they are often to be satisfied by 
appearances. One gives way a little and one makes 
a show of giving way much further. That is why 
I want Farundell, my lord. As our pied a terre in 
England. I believe my wife will live perfectly con¬ 
tentedly in America if I can create for her the illu¬ 
sion that she has an English home. We may visit 
it occasionally, but I will not,” he struck the table 
with a passion the more significant since he had used 
no gestures, “I will not have my son educated 
amongst anti-prohibitionists at Eton.” 

“I ... I really don’t think you would find the 
subject prominent at Eton,” ventured Litherbrow. 

“In ten years’ time?” asked Wyler and then he 
prophesied, “In ten years’ time, my lord, prohibition 




The Man From Ipswich 237 


will be the subject at Eton and everywhere else 
where English politics are mentioned.” 

‘ 1 Well, well,” said Litherbrow, declining to argue 
with a fanatic. 

i ‘It was while I was in the army,” Mr. Wyler went 
on with an equable air of consenting to change the 
topic, “that I heard from my father-in-law, as I said 
a Russian by origin,, of the Manchurian oil-fields 
and ...” 

Manchuria! Lord Litherbrow did not think Man¬ 
churia interested him. His concern was with Farun- 
dell and with this man whom he alternately liked and 
disliked and at present exceedingly disliked. He 
dared* the man from Ipswich dared, to say he 
wanted Farundell as a pied d ter re! Not ironically, 
for he admitted his intention of not living in Farun¬ 
dell, he called it a pied a terre, a little crib! Farun¬ 
dell as the week-end cottage of a millionaire who 
spent his week-days in America! Worse: of a mil¬ 
lionaire to whom Farundell was the dust he threw in 
hi& wife’s eyes! Was this the good owner he postu¬ 
lated for his Farundell, an absentee who—what was 
the fellow saying! He’d expect a “Yes” or a “No” 
in the right place. 

“ .... I was very nearly an international inci¬ 
dent. I thought back in those days to the peace and 
quiet of Vimy Ridge, but finally I sold out. The 
thing was too complicated and the Jap syndicate 
made me an offer. Can’t say I sold them my rights. 
Rights isn’t a word that goes in Manchuria. Call it 
my chances. They bought me off and I let them, at 
a price. Really, the thing was too hot to hold on to 
any longer.” 





238 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Good heavens!” said Lord Litherbrow, guessing 
that an expression of surprise was due. 

“I noticed it held you spellbound ,’’ said Mr. 
Wyler complacently. 

“And so you came home after that!” said his 
lordship rather hurriedly. 

“ No, ” Mr. Wyler corrected him. * ‘ I came to Eng¬ 
land to settle up here and to take my wife home with 
me. If you sell me Farundell, it’ll be my last deal. 
I’m anxious to see for myself how Federal Prohibi¬ 
tion works. Between the war and Manchuria I 
haven’t seen it yet.” It was suggested that his eyes 
were sore for the sight. 

“May I be candid with you, Mr. Wyler? I have 
an affection for Farundell. Its sale has become nec¬ 
essary for me ...” 

“England’s not what she was,” asserted Mr. Wy¬ 
ler, under the impression, apparently, that he was 
offering suitable consolation. 

“Oh, quite, quite,” said Litherbrow vaguely. 
“But I had hoped to know that Farundell would be 
cared for as I have cared for it myself and—” 

“I think,” said Mr. Wyler with some warmth, 
“that we Americans respect a genuine antique,” and 
no doubt that was true, but both the “we Ameri¬ 
cans” in this man’s mouth and his way of accenting 
“genuine” grated upon Lord Litherbrow. 

“If you proposed to live here, Mr. Wyler,” he 
said, “I might not hesitate. But I had not consid¬ 
ered the possibility of an absentee owner.” 

Buy a thing and you buy it: it’s yours. But if 
Wyler wanted Farundell mainly as a pawn to play 
in his matrimonial game, he wanted this pawn above 





The Man From Ipswich 239 


all others; the Ipswich in him cried out for it, and 
he could be accommodating to secure it. “Well,” 
he said, “that isn’t difficult. You’ll have a bailiff. 
You’re not here yourself all the time.” True, but 
not from want of inclination. “Leave me the bail¬ 
iff. I’ll take him on with orders to change nothing. 
Same with the butler for the inside of the house. 
Isn’t that good enough?” 

It was so good that Litherbrow had a difficulty in 
telling him that it ought to be a great deal better. 
When he spoke of Farundell being “cared for,” he 
meant more than its preservation; he meant that it 
ought to be loved; it deserved better than to be 
owned from America and left in charge of servants, 
old retainers and trustees of the traditions though 
they were. Why, use for use, Bassett’s against 
Wyler’s, he preferred the institutional, with all its 
disturbances, to the cold-blooded. Children were 
human and Wyler, a personable owner, filling so 
well and not too well his indisputable clothes, an 
owner exactly in the picture, Wyler refused to own. 
It was not owning Farundell to treat it as a museum- 
piece. Farundell was made to be lived in. 

“You place me in a dilemma, Mr. Wyler,” he 
admitted. 

“Others before me?” asked Wyler. Mr. Ed- 
wardes, indeed, by way of precaution had hinted as 
much, and the special felicity of Farundell in his 
mind made Wyler suppose himself one of a large 
field of applicants. “I’ve got the dough,” he said. 
“Though I expect they all have.” 

At any rate, Bassett, also, had the “dough,” and 
Bassett had Miss Evelow. Bassett, solus, was un- 




240 


The Wrong Shadow 


thinkable, but suppose lie could secure the perma¬ 
nent attachment of Miss Evelow to Farundell as 
superintendent? In that case ... he became aware 
of Mr. Wyler’s gaze. 

“Running the bunch over?” suggested Wyler 
acutely. 

“Well—” Litherbrow looked guilty. 

“You’re an easy book to read, to a man like me,” 
said Herbert Wyler. “Is it ‘Yes’ or ‘No?’ ” 

“May I . . . may I think it over?” 

“I pay the price,” Wyler recapitulated his offer. 
“I take on bailiff and butler. I’m at the Grand 
Western. Will you let me hear by Wednesday?” 

“Thank you,” said Lord Litherbrow, reprieved. 


II 

A woman of sense, thought Mr. Edwardes as he 
read Lady Litherbrow’s letter. “I could come with 
Lord Litherbrow,” she wrote, “but I shall not do 
that. Frankness is essential, and two people can 
be more frank than three. In my presence you 
would moderate your language which in my absence 
can be, if you please, immoderate. I rely absolutely 
on your putting an end to this shilly-shallying.” 

Thus the Litherbrow Commander-in-Chief with 
design to ‘ ‘ ginger up ’ ’ Mr. Edwardes, w T ho welcomed 
the letter rather as evidence that her ladyship’s 
mind jumped with his own than as a stimulus to 
action. He was prepared already to act as sharply 
as it was possible to act with Litherbrow in the situ¬ 
ation of adviser with client. Litherbrow’s long let- 




The Man From Ipswich 241 


ter, preceding her ladyship’s, describing in full his 
hesitations and their cause, had been read with im¬ 
patience and the disrespectful comment of Mr. Ed- 
wardes, “a donkey between two trusses of hay,” 
was one which he saw no reason to revise—espe¬ 
cially now that he had Lady Litherbrow’s implicit 
agreement with it. Well, he would do his best to 
make the donkey choose his truss. 

“Having had my letter,” said Litherbrow as he 
sunk into the client’s chair, “you appreciate my 
difficulties. ’ ’ 

“From the point of view of the lawn at Farun- 
dell where we last spoke of this together, ’ ’ said Ed- 
wardes, “I do. But in this office I have another 
viewpoint. The first thing to say is that there has 
been no further inquiry.” 

“Oh, dear!” said Litherbrow. “I’d hoped—” 

“So had I. I had hoped, for your sake, for the 
perfect purchaser. He is not forthcoming, and time 
is against us. There are certain demands which 
must be satisfied. We are under obligation already 
to some of your creditors who have refrained from 
pressure simply because they knew we were selling 
Farundell. You have two proposals before you, and 
I put it to you that to keep courteous creditors wait¬ 
ing one day longer than is necessary is hardly hon¬ 
orable. I ... I am not sugaring the pill, my lord.” 

He wasn’t, and the words “hardly honorable” 
stung like a whip, as they were meant to sting, a 
client more used to receiving soothing syrup than 
censure from his solicitor. 

And Litherbrow had come in so hopefully: he had 
loitered in sheer enjoyment of his apprehensions, 






242 


The Wrong Shadow 


so soon to be removed, in the sunshine of Lincoln’s 
Inn Fields. He had watched lawn tennis played and 
had wondered who were the privileged people who 
had access to those courts. He had rejoiced alike 
with the lovers on the benches and with the spar¬ 
rows in the trees. He had been sure, so sure, that 
Farundell would not betray herself and that even 
then there awaited him in Mr. Edwardes’ office, the 
news of a fresh and wholly likable applicant. 
These things did not happen. The Bassetts and the 
Wylers were trials sent, if there was any real pur¬ 
pose about it at all, to test his faith; behind them 
was the man of whom he could approve, the man to 
whom he could commit Farundell with a clear con¬ 
science. He had faith that the hour had struck and 
that the man, or word of him, was ready for him. 

Instead, this bluntness, this harsh resume of the 
unchanged situation! The austere office seemed, 
after the propitious square, a charnel-house; Ed¬ 
wardes, the keeper of Hope’s mortuary. “My dear 
Edwardes!” he gasped. 

Edwardes pursued his advantage relentlessly. 
“You have before you two proposals,” he repeated, 
“equally sound financially. You dislike both men 
alike and—” 

“As to that,” interrupted Litherbrow, “as to my 
dislike being equal—” 

“I gather from your letter, my lord,” said Ed¬ 
wardes who did not want a repetition in the office 
of Litherbrow’s vacillations, “that your objections 
to Wyler are evenly balanced by your objections to 
Bassett.” 

“Well . . . on the whole.” 




The Man From Ipswich 243 


“And you agree with me, I hope, that we have no 
possible excuse for further delay.’’ 

“I suppose optimism is irrational?” Litherbrow 
ventured to sav. 

“There comes a time for facts.” 

“Yes . . . yes.” Though had it, could it have 
come in the absence of that third applicant whom 
Farundell would take to her bosom? But it was, 
Edwardes had said it, dishonorable to delay further. 

“Can we settle it now, my lord? Let me write 
the name of Wyler on this piece of paper and the 
name of Bassett on that. Let me put the papers in a 
hat and ...” 

“No! No!” Blind chance, when he was the cus¬ 
todian of Farundell? He wouldn’t shuffle off re¬ 
sponsibility in that schoolboy spirit. “Not that 
way, Edwardes.” 

The appeal to sporting instincts failed. “Then,” 
said Edwardes earnestly, “I have another sugges¬ 
tion to make and, my lord, it is my last. Not very 
long ago an eminent K.C. was about to be offered 
a judgeship. The Lord Chancellor, as it happened, 
was not well acquainted with him, but he asked him 
to dine. His intention was, after dinner, to offer the 
judgeship. Dessert included oranges, and the way 
of the K.C. in eating an orange lost him his chance 
on the Bench.” Mr. Edwardes paused and looked 
up at the gray ceiling. His air was that of one who 
has made his point and waits in assured confidence 
for its effect. There was no effect beyond the polite 
smile which struggled for its life on Litherbrow’s 
puzzled face. “A judge,” Edwardes prompted, 
“has social as well as legal duties.” 




244 


The Wrong Shadow 


‘‘ Quite,’’ said Litherbrow. “Exactly.’’ 

“Then you see the application?” To his dis¬ 
tress, Litherbrow did not see the application and 
Edwardes went on, “So far, you have seen Mr. Wy¬ 
ler and Mr. Bassett separately. My suggestion is 
that you see them together at your own table. I do 
not insist upon the orange test, but I advise oranges 
for dessert. I advise asparagus. A bird, of course. 
Perhaps macaroni in the soup. You are making it, 
you, not I, a question of the personal suitability of 
these gentlemen as owners of Farundell. Then you 
must decide between them, and table manners alone, 
together with their whole bearing when invited to 
dine at Litherbrow House—the house is open, I be¬ 
lieve?—will help you to a decision which must be 
made. They would meet not consciously as rivals, 
but as acquaintances of yours, and by the end of 
the evening your decision would be taken. Is that 
agreeable to you?” 

It was agreeable only in the sense that he saw no 
alternative but to agree to a plan which, intimately, 
he condemned as a gross abuse of hospitality. To 
invite guests deliberately in order to pass judgment 
on their manners! But the sunshine of Lincoln’s 
Inn Fields still lingered with him, and Edwardes 
had not killed all his hope and his faith in the final 
inviolability of Farundell. Men failed; then Farun¬ 
dell herself would act; Farundell would draw the 
right buyer forward by the strength of her own 
essential beauty. 

He could agree to this plan because it was a post¬ 
ponement of his decision, because it gave Farundell 
some further days in which to choose her fitting 





The Man From Ipswich 245 


owner who would be neither Mr. Wyler nor Mr. Bas¬ 
sett. And that owner having made himself appar¬ 
ent, he could entertain these guests without the hate¬ 
ful thought that he must spy upon them: he need 
not entertain them at all. “Very well, Edwardes,” 
he consented, “I agree.’’ 

Edwardes concealed his satisfaction with a har¬ 
mony reached at less than his anticipated trouble. 
“You undertook,” he said briskly, “to let Wyler 
know by Wednesday. I suggest Tuesday evening 
for the dinner and I look forward to receiving your 
decision—your final decision,” he emphasized, “by 
Wednesday morning.” 

It seemed terribly summary. Could Farundell, 
that leisured place, so soon gather her forces and 
compel her owner to appear? Tuesday! But he had 
agreed and he would stand by his word as Farun¬ 
dell would stand by Farundell. 

“Yes,” he said with unusual determination, “yes. 
My final decision.” 

“Ah!” said Mr. Edwardes, mentally composing a 
re-assuring letter to Lady Litherbrow. He held his 
hand out. 

“Edwardes,” said Lord Litherbrow, “a prohibi¬ 
tionist!” Edwardes wouldn’t have cared if Mr. 
Wyler had been a vegetarian; a man with such 
banker’s references as his had indefeasible right to 
hold any opinions he pleased. “A prohibitionist, 
and asserts that in the next ten years prohibition 
will be a motive in English politics.” 

It was pro-Wylerism rather than cynicism or de¬ 
liberation which made Edwardes reply, “After all, 
we shall need something to replace Ireland.” 




246 


The Wrong Shadow 


Litherbrow was startled. “Do you mean seri¬ 
ously—?” 

“ Seriously ?” asked Edwardes and bis eye twin¬ 
kled. ‘ 1 Seriously it bas taken some centuries to settle 
the Irish question, if it is settled. I think a Prohibi¬ 
tion question, if there were one, would have at least 
as long a life. And may I suggest that you do not 
pre-judge these gentlemen further? Let Tuesday 
night bring its disclosures of what they are and with 
their avowals of themselves, your decision.” 

“Yes. Yes, certainly.” He had, it relieved Ed¬ 
wardes to see, his hand outstretched. Edwardes 
took it and bent over it with the dignified deference 
he was accustomed to express when he, a commoner, 
shook hands with a peer, then led the way to the 
door. 

“Edwardes!” 

“My lord?” Not quite deferentially. Impatience 
was suggested and hint was, he hoped, conveyed that 
interviews with busy solicitors should not be con¬ 
tinued beyond their end. 

“Mr. Bassett,” began Litherbrow. “When Mr. 
Bassett came to Farundell, he brought his secretary 
with him. A lady, Edwardes.” (“Oh, dear!” 
thought Mr. Edwardes.) “She—she palliated Bas¬ 
sett. Do you think I could ask her with him to 
dinner?” 

It is to be feared that Mr. Edwardes misunder¬ 
stood. What he thought was “At your time of life! 
You old rip!” W 7 hat he said was, “There are few 
people who would refuse an invitation to dine at 
Litherbrow House, my lord.” 




The Man From Ipswich 247 


“I should be correct/’ persisted Litherbrow, 4 ‘in 
asking her? A note directed to her at the . . . the 
establishment of Mr. Bassett f” 

“I would say perfectly correct,” said Mr. Ed- 
wardes gravely. 

“Ah,” said Litherbrow. “Yes. I wish to be 
quite fair to Mr. Bassett. Thank you, Edwardes.” 

He wished, supposing Farundell failed to “act,” 
supposing it came, after all, to a pitting of Wyler’s 
pretensions to own Farundell against Bassett’s, to 
pit Bassett whole (that is, Bassett with Miss Eve- 
low) against Wyler. Edwardes clearly preferred 
Wyler and Lord Litherbrow, still writhing under 
Edwardes’ use of the word “honorable,” inclined 
to set his face against the preferred of Mr. Ed¬ 
wardes. Bassett came with Miss Evelow to Farun¬ 
dell and he should come with her to Litherbrow 
House: Bassett should have every chance, the 
chance, for instance, of promising to appoint Miss 
Evelow as superintendent of his institution, and in 
that case Litherbrow did not know but that Wyler— 
the pied a terre man, as he called him—would not 
meet with a defeat. 

An awkward table, three men and a lady, but there 
was no escaping that unless Farundell acted. And 
Farundell would. Farundell must. Then Lord 
Litherbrow could have a diplomatic indisposition on 
Tuesday night and the dinner would not take place. 
Oh, it would not take place! He detested the sug¬ 
gestion of Mr. Edwardes. Good fellow, Edwardes, 
but too practical. Too much law coarsens a man. 

The law-coarsened Mr. Edwardes sat back in his 





248 


The Wrong Shadow 


chair reflecting. “Sixty,’’ he thought. “Sixty if 
he ’s a day. And the lady secretary of Mr. Bassett! 
I own I’m surprised. I thought I knew Litherbrow, 
but—” He rang his bell for a waiting client to be 
shown in. 




CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


LITHERBROW HOUSE 

I 

L ORD LITHERBROW writing his three invita¬ 
tions to a dinner stands comparison with that 
other victim of circumstance, a judge, who sentences 
a woman to be hanged: the woman, the judge knows, 
will not be hanged; the dinner, his lordship was quite 
sure, would never be served. The death sentence on 
a woman is a legal fiction* and the dinner also was a 
fiction invented by a lawyer; the judge did his duty 
and passed the sentence, Lord Litherbrow did his 
duty and issued his invitations and both knew that 
the fiction would not be translated into fact. 

In sheer humanity, somebody, wardress or solici¬ 
tor, has probably warned the woman in the dock that 
the sentence, if passed, is not to be taken at face, or 
at neck, value; but there was no one to warn Mr. 
Bassett that his invitation was delusive, a sophisti¬ 
cal invitation having currency only until Farundell, 
by merely deserving a seemly owner, caused one to 
appear, and he read Litherbrow’s note to mean that 
his quest was at an end, that Farundell was his, and 
that the closing of the transaction was to be cele¬ 
brated, in the manner usual between Englishmen, by 
dining upon it. 


*This was written before a British Government made it a fact. 

249 



250 


The Wrong Shadow 


Audrey thought so too and felt exhilaration not 
only on Bassetts behalf but on her own. She was 
asked to dine in that stately house, occupying a cor¬ 
ner of Grosvenor Square, which had once been 
pointed out to her by her father, Colonel Evelow, an 
Englishman who loved a lord, and it is not to be 
denied that the prospect thrilled her. There was 
something of her father in her (have any of the sons 
and daughters of our lord-loving fathers erased 
themselves from the Book of Snobs?) and she knew 
how he would have relished this for her, how, seeing 
to what social heights it led her, he would have for¬ 
given her refusal to be nursery governess to the 
Maitlands or gardener to the Evelows, and, simply 
for herself, she savored it. Walthamstow had led 
her, through Max, to a seat in an author’s box on a 
great first night; it was to lead her, through Bassett, 
to a chair at table in Litherbrow House, and of the 
two peaks it was the second which she thought the 
higher. 

No doubt there was snobbery in that; there was 
the force of unexpunged tradition, but there was also 
the fact that she had not seen Max since she declined 
to let him wear her like an invisible laurel on the 
stage and since, lacking that laurel, he had fled from 
the theater. Achilles sulked in his tent (perhaps, 
she thought whimsically, because she had his hat and 
coat and he couldn’t go out), but, she was to find 
before long, Achilles had a heel, and, meantime, her 
movement was away from the theater, a meretri¬ 
cious place, to Litherbrow House, an authentic. 

She had the grace (grace is often an adroit swerve 
to avoid trouble) not to advertise before Miss Min- 




Lithe t brow House 


251 


niver her receipt in the office of an invitation from 
a lord. Like Bassett, she took it to mean that the 
quest was at its end, and with the quest those excur¬ 
sions to the country which had begun as a perquisite 
of Miss Minniver. They would end now for them 
both but while Litherbrow House gilded- the end for 
Audrey there was nothing for Gladys but the wind¬ 
ing up of a line she threw to her discouraged but un¬ 
dying hope. 

When Bassett came in and gave his secretaries 
4 ‘Good morning,’’ he read a warning in Audrey’s 
eye which sent him to his desk with all his wits about 
him. Gladys was not, as Audrey was, a pre-occupa¬ 
tion of his, but he saw clearly enough that the place 
and time were inappropriate for the full-throated 
whoop he would have liked to have given on reading 
Litherbrow’s letter. He could, if he must, bottle up 
his feelings until that convenient lunch-hour of Miss 
Minniver’s; but the affairs of Leviathan Tonic had 
fidgety attention from a gentleman about to exorcise 
a devil by buying Farundell. 

And then? Wasn’t the then now and couldn’t he, 
when Gladys went, release not only his thankfulness 
to a lord but his devotion to a lady? He couldn’t 
wait. Wait and black doubt would come. Wait and 
his stoppered-up feelings must turn sour within him; 
wait and he would doubt the infallibility of Farun¬ 
dell, he would doubt his right now at last to speak 
to Audrey, to tell her everything and to ask her to 
take a chance with him. Wait, and the chance would 
loom monstrous, a fate engulfing both of them. He 
could not wait, he invented a business occasion in 
the West End for Gladys and told her that if she 




252 


The Wrong Shadow 


had any shopping to do she needn’t hurry back. 
And Gladys was a heliograph, flashing from excel¬ 
lent teeth and sparking eyes her bright appreciation 
of the score over Audrey implied to her by the gen¬ 
erous terms of this mission. She felt her stock at 
par and buoyant. 

And her travesty of the situation did not matter 
to Bassett, who was rid of her and free to—. Was 
he free? A back-wash of despair caught at him and 
he wondered, while Audrey had no perplexities but 
only the sense that it is delightful to share a secret 
with somebody one likes, even if one is not sure of 
the degree of one’s liking. 

“It seemed unkind to mention this before Miss 
Minniver,” she said rather primly. He was leaving 
it to her to break the ice. 

“It means an awful lot,” he said and if he didn’t 
say “awe-ful,” he was feeling it. 

“It means that you get Farundell,” said Audrey, 
jubilant, “that you are preferred to any other 
applicants.” 

He nodded. “Yes. And more. So very much 
more.” 

Being portentous about it, she thought, but per¬ 
haps the sum of money involved gave him the right. 
“The scheme, of course. We can begin really to 
think it out now.” 

He thanked her for that “we.” He drew encour¬ 
agement from it. “Miss Evelow,” he began husk¬ 
ily, “I want to tell you—” and “Oh,” said Audrey 
under her breath, “Oh!” and thought inconse- 
quently of Max. “About your plans?” she said 
aloud. 




Litherbrow House 


253 


“No. Or rather, yes. My plans. But I must be¬ 
gin at the beginning.” Honesty was his impedi¬ 
ment. He couldn’t begin with his love and go on to 
his doom. He had to tell her of his doom and so 
come to his love. “There are certain facts I 
wish to put before you. In connection with my 
life.” 

Once upon a time, she supposed, it was chivalrous, 
in the real sense, for a man to confess that there had 
been “facts” in his life. Colonel Evelow possibly 
would have been shocked to know that Audrey was 
not ignorant of such facts. But today, surely, they 
were not spoken of for the reason that they were 
admitted? It was stout-hearted in him fumblingly 
to be essaying a confession, but it affronted her mod¬ 
ernity. She was so often doubtful if she walked 
sure-footed in the modern world that here, where 
she had no doubt at all, she was not going to be 
doubted, she was not going to be treated like an 
anachronism. “We won’t speak of them, please,” 
she said. It wasn’t done, not because one put frills 
on facts to hide them, but because frills were de- 
mode and the facts were evident to all. One did not 
need a search-light to see them. 

“Not speak of them!” He looked in idiotic sur¬ 
prise at the snag she offered to his current. It 
wasn’t fair to ask her to marry him until she knew 
of the flaw in his career. It was a good flaw, a flaw 
he hadn’t voluntarily made, a flaw he had sweated to 
correct. But he had been chained to its conse¬ 
quences, there were nagging doubts if even Farun- 
dell would damn the consequences and she must be 
told about it all. She must be consulted; she must 




254 


The Wrong Shadow 


not be asked to join a partnership with secret lia¬ 
bilities. “But . . . but ... ” he said. 

“If you please, Mr. Bassett.” 

He was aghast at her unfairness. “If there is 
something else,” she encouraged. But this came 
first, the indispensable preliminary. 

“Another time, I hope,” he said hopelessly, hope¬ 
less because this was his hour and she would not 
let it strike. 

Audrey was thinking, ‘ ‘ I can ’t do more than that. 
This is the Hampshire staircase over again” and 
“You won’t let me explain?” he pleaded. She 
wouldn’t. One did not explain; one had one’s facts, 
but one did not glory in them. His persistence 
seemed hardly decent. “If you have nothing else 
to say ...” she said. 

He shook his head. Beyond a barrier which she 
so unaccountably refused to let him raise, he had 
tremendously much else to say; but the barrier was 
down. Oh, one thing might be said, if with some 
difficulty. “About a dress for Tuesday night,” he 
began. He was far from his hopes of a fiancee gor¬ 
geously gowned by him, but . . . perhaps . . . 

“Thank you. I have one.” The theater frock 
would coldly furnish forth the Litherbrow feast. 
She spoke of it as she thought of it, coldly, glacially. 
She would go, but the zest had gone out of their 
high occasion. This man of advances and quick re¬ 
treats! “Have you some letters to dictate?” she 
asked, to define their relationship. 

“They’ll wait,” said Mr. Bassett and flung out of 
the office. He went West, and from the fact that 









Lit herbrow House 


255 


he walked along the crowded side of Oxford Street, 
it may be hazarded that he hoped to find a lunch 
companion in Gladys Minniver. If so, he was dis¬ 
appointed. Frascati’s received him from a drench¬ 
ing shower. 


II 

The somnolent magnificence of sphinxes! Sphinx- 
like in Suffolk, Farundell still smiled and smiled 
and was, let us not say a villain but, a dainty rogue 
in brick; a sleepy rogue. Did nothing prick her to 
bestir herself ! Had she no shame to be an institu¬ 
tion, no blush to be a pied a terref Would nothing 
shake her from her sleek assurance! 

And Tuesdays recur. The implacable recurrence 
of Tuesdays began to fix itself like a newly discov¬ 
ered law of Nature in Lord Litherbrow’s mind. The 
incredible dinner would take place unless (as had 
happened before to arrangements of his) Lady 
Litherbrow put her veto upon it. 

“Tuesday ... ” he began hopefully. 

“Tuesday!” said Lady Litherbrow who had heard 
from Mr. Edwardes. “I dine out. The Duchess. 
There’s a new playwright.” 

“You,” he ventured, “don’t usually collect.” 

“Not a bit,” she agreed. “But Connie Killier 
does and he wouldn’t go to her. So the Duchess sent 
him a command. We’ve bets about his turning up.” 

No veto on his arrangements here. No hope. “I 
have to give a sort of dinner,” he said with pitiable 
resignation, “to three guests.” And his only solace 






256 


The Wrong Shadow 


was the third: it was not in the brilliant smile by 
which Lady Litherbrow gave him her blessing on 
his “sort of dinner.’’ 

Tuesday then. Not quite the splendidly rubri¬ 
cated red-letter day of all Mr. Bassett’s hopes, but 
the day on which he was to hear of his preferment 
to the ownership of Farundell, a day sufficiently il¬ 
lustrious even if it lacked the crowning mercy of an 
engagement to Audrey. He had grown voracious in 
his expectations, he had, in the exhilaration of re¬ 
ceiving the letter from Lord Litherbrow, overshot 
the mark, which was Farundell first and Audrey 
only as goal beyond the goal. He might be, and he 
was, bewildered by the check she had opposed to his 
quite necessary opening, but some check at that 
stage had been deserved by a traveler who went too 
fast: he ought not to have opened at all. 

He had, at the same time, his private assurance 
about Audrey. There was a misunderstanding, re¬ 
move it and he knew her his: but to remove it now 
was to mar the incorruptibility of purpose. Farun¬ 
dell, the Farundell idea, must stand alone, chaste, un¬ 
confused by the unfathomable seduction of women. 
That was why the check was opportune and right 
and that was why, Farundell being about to become 
his, the check was temporary. He had recovered, 
by Tuesday, all that he had lost of complacency on 
that morning in the office. 

And if it was not, for Audrey, a disarmed truce, 
at least her arms did not bristle. She was going to 
Litherbrow House and there was much virtue in re¬ 
fusing to look too far forward. Gayety by mutual 
consent was their mood as he took her in his car 




Litherbrow House 


257 


from Claverton Street to Grosvenor Square: for 
them Willett had lived; for them the Government 
defied the farmers and stood by summer time—that 
the sun might shine upon Mr. Bassett and Miss Eve- 
low on their way to dine with Lord Litherbrow at 
his house in Grosvenor Square. 

Audrey gasped, it is true, when the door opened 
to them and they stood in the hall of Litherbrow 
House, but that was not because its grandeur could 
subdue her gayety but because all the dreams in stone 
are not in Cologne and the staircase of this man¬ 
sion, in green marble, was breath-taking by sheer 
beauty: and Mr. Bassett, habitue of the Grand West¬ 
ern, was not to be put down by a marble staircase 
and a flunkey so remarkably unlike the flunkeys of 
musical comedy or the films. He thought, too, that 
the drawing-room was surpassed by more than one 
room in the Automobile Club, and a mellow content¬ 
ment fell upon him. There was no constraint of 
ordeal about this; nothing but plain sailing in 
smooth water before a fair wind. 

The amenities of Lord Litherbrow did nothing to 
disturb his impression that no man was ever given 
on easier terms an occasion of which he could boast 
quietly for the rest of his life. Inwardly, Lither¬ 
brow was nervous and ashamed; oppressed by the 
choice he had undertaken to make, oppressed by the 
vulgar artifice of Mr. Edwardes to which he must 
seem to have consented (there were no oranges for 
dessert and no table-traps for fumblers); but out¬ 
wardly he was an unembarrassed gentleman doing 
simple honor to his guests. And he was glad that 
Bassett and Miss Evelow had come first; he saw an 






258 


The Wrong Shadow 


omen in it; lie wanted them to be first all the way; 
he was biased against Wyler on no better grounds 
than that Edwardes, author of this damnable din¬ 
ner, was biased for him. 

Bassett was English and he wasn’t a prohibition¬ 
ist and, Lord!, the blatant things some of these new 
rich fellows were doing with their money! Bassett 
. . . quaint little fellow, throwing his shoulders back 
to make the most of all the height he had until he 
was in danger of overbalancing backwards on the 
floor; but he had a decent-minded use for Farundell, 
and if Miss Evelow ... Yes, he must take an op¬ 
portunity for a private word with her about his 
notion of a superintendency ... if she consented, 
Bassett would win hands down. Hardly a doubt of 
it, Bassett was his man. He made ready to snap 
his fingers at Edwardes and his Wyler. Prohibition 
a motive in English politics! And punctuality 
wasn’t one of the virtues of a prohibitionist either. 
If Mr. Wyler did not turn up soon, he would be, so 
to speak, scratched. Bassett would win by default 
of his competitor. For a man who must be on ten¬ 
terhooks (now that they were sitting, Bassett’s pre¬ 
carious erectness no longer distressed him), he 
thought that Bassett carried it off with admirable 
phlegm. He saluted the sangfroid of a competitor 
who did not so much as guess there was a competi¬ 
tion, and he raised the pitch of his amenities from 
the polite to the cordial. He chased away any mem¬ 
ory that might still lurk in Bassett or in Audrey of 
a telegram received at Farundell and of a change of 
front. 

Mr. Bassett laughed at a little sally of Lord Lith- 





Litherbrow House 


259 


erbrow’s, and the laugh froze on his lips. It was 
all over. Farundell was a mockery, a lie, only an¬ 
other, if the largest of his mousetraps. He was star¬ 
ing at the floor, at a patch of sunlight shining 
through the still uncurtained window, and at that 
sign from the past which had once ruined his repu¬ 
tation for business loyalty and prevented a deal in 
linen: he was staring, stupefied by horror, at the 
shadow of Herbert Wyler. 


Ill 

There was nothing to be said and nothing to be 
done. His Fate had intervened, had hung out the 
sign of the millstone again. No doubt he could buy 
Farundell, no doubt he could gratify his zeal for 
health, but it was made clear to him by this sign, that 
his zeal was his private affair and that its gratifica¬ 
tion, on no matter how grandiose a scale, had nQth- 
ing to do with the expiation of his fault. He was 
still in chains, still sundered from Audrey. He sat 
abject. 

From an immense distance he heard the voice of 
Lord Litherbrow, speaking words that had no mean¬ 
ing. All that penetrated to him was the fact that 
Litherbrow was surprised. Well, let him be sur¬ 
prised. Who cared if he was surprised, th3 aristo¬ 
cratic pauper? 

A refinement of the voice of Herbert Wyler said 
drawlingly, “How are you, Bassett?” He heard 
Litherbrow say, again in surprise, “You know each 
other!” and he heard Wyler reply “Once. Many 




26 o 


The Wrong Shadow 


years ago. How many, Bassett t Fifteen, isn’t it!” 

He found himself on his feet shaking the corporeal 
hand of the man whose voice resembled Wyler’s. 
From Mrs. Ruddle’s . . . fifteen years . . . Lord 
Litherbrow’s! But Wyler was dead, Wyler’s ghost 
was his familiar, and this (he looked at him) this 
inverted caricature of Wyler, this edition de luxe of 
a weedy ineffectual in a ready-made suit with a 
scrubby chin, this confident dandy . . . ! This 
dandy, who having come late was followed at once 
by the announcement of dinner, was going in the 
wake of Lord Litherbrow and Miss Evelow from the 
room, and Miss Evelow was sending him over her 
shoulder a quick message of encouragement. She 
remembered the Grand Western, his prostration on 
hearing that Olga’s name was Wyler and her own 
humiliation in the office when he gave her a reason 
wdiy that name unmanned him. She was better in¬ 
formed now than then. Here was another Wyler, 
who had met Bassett fifteen years ago; a relation, 
perhaps a brother, of Mr. “Canteen” Wyler, and 
Bassett was unnerved, as he was before, by poignant 
recollections of his beloved friend. She tried to put 
all her understanding, all her sympathy into one 
reviving, stimulating glance, and because the will 
had gone out of him he responded mechanically, 
walked mechanically to the dining-room, mechani¬ 
cally sat and ate the carefully easy food of Lither¬ 
brow’s fastidious ordering. 

To neither guest did it occur that they were rivals 
for the possession of Farundell. Bassett’s thoughts 
were vagrants and Wyler looked down on Bassett 
from the heights of an irascible contempt. It irked 






Litherbrow House 


261 


him that he owed his start in life to little Bassett; 
Bassett was architect, unconsciously but definitely, 
of the Wyler fortunes; and Wyler had been avoiding 
Bassett who was, heaven knew, discoverable enough 
by his egregious advertising. He had not wished to 
meet the man who sent him, through drunkenness, to 
America; muck-raking in the buried past from which 
had sprouted his effulgent present; and now, because 
of Litherbrow, he was meeting him. He resented it 
and he resented Litherbrow. 

At this distance from Suffolk and its territorial 
obfuscation he could see Lord Litherbrow with, so 
to speak, the lid off. Litherbrow had till Wednes¬ 
day in which to decide about Farundell; to ask Mr. 
Wyler to dinner on Tuesday and to tell him then 
that Farundell was his, that “dough” in the hand 
was irresistible, was natural courtesy, but to misuse 
the occasion in order to work off at the same time 
some obligation to Bassett (money-lending, he 
guessed) was insulting to Mr. Wyler. It degraded 
Mr. Wyler and his purchase of Farundell to the level 
of Mr. Bassett and of whatever obscure transaction 
a needy peer had had with the advertising proprie¬ 
tor of a quack medicine. Bassett no doubt had made 
money, in a small way, and clearly Litherbrow could 
not afford to be squeamish. And he resented the 
more that Litherbrow had kept him waiting over 
Farundell. He looked about him testily for an op¬ 
portunity to express his displeasure, and an in¬ 
structed servant seemed to reply, by pouring water 
in his glass, that he was not easily to find his oppor¬ 
tunity. 

There remained the way of suavity, the way of 





262 


The Wrong Shadow 


impressing on these mean people, by indicating the 
importance of being Wyler, a consciousness of their 
own cheapness. That was best to be done in con¬ 
versation with a third party and heaven had pro¬ 
vided her in the person of Miss Evelow. He did not 
cpnnect Audrey with Bassett: he connected her with 
Lord Litherbrow: an inmate, he supposed, of Lith- 
erbrow House and, at any rate, a lady. He would 
talk to the lady, and Bassett and Litherbrow, as 
audience, would perceive themselves excluded from 
his conversation and made small by it. 

He adjusted his monocle. “Do you travel much, 
Miss Evelow?” he asked. 

Audrey thought she did. She traveled six days 
out of seven from Pimlico to Walthamstow and back, 
but as those journeys had more of the pains than the 
pleasures of travel, they would not be quite what 
he meant. “No,” she said. “A little on the Conti¬ 
nent before the war. I’ve not been out of England 
since. ’ ’ 

“Why, you surprise me,” he said. No wonder 
Farundell was for sale, no wonder Lord Litherbrow 
had dealings with a Bassett! “Europe’s a cheap 
place for you English.” Litherbrow, the limpet, he 
thought, clinging inertly to his rock till the tide 
came up to swamp him: he hadn’t even the energy 
to go abroad with his dependents. 

“We can’t all run away from England,” said 
Audrey, neither in defense of Litherbrow nor in ac¬ 
cusation of Wyler, but with nothing other in her 
mind than the thought that she, with her living to 
earn, had had precious small chance of travel. 

Mr. Wyler sat up erectly. A mischievous young 





Litherbrow House 


263 


woman. Evidently, Lord Litherbrow had talked him 
over with her, and, it seemed, unfavorably. If their 
fencing was to be without buttons, he could cry “No 
quarter” with anybody. 

“No?” he asked. “Parochial proverb No. 1. 
‘Polling stones gather no moss.’ But I shall offer 
you another proverb. ‘A bee in the bonnet gathers 
honey/ One gets, I mean, one’s impetus from some 
source or another. Mine took me from England and 
I suppose it gathered new forces on the way. One 
grows, and one moves. In the last few years, I have 
spanned most of the globe and I assure you I have 
gathered moss. I . . . ” 

And so on. Fairly launched. Bristling with “ I’s ” 
as a fishing harbor bristles with masts when the fleet 
is in. An “I” to every sentence; many “gather¬ 
ings ’ ’; much harvest-pride. Legitimate, he thought, 
salutary for this audience, for Bassett who had 
known him in the ugly chrysalis state of his torpid¬ 
ity and for Litherbrow who had so undisceming an 
idea of the sort of company this butterfly should 
keep. A man must assert himself. And on Bassett, 
for one, his Odyssey was thrown away. Bassett was 
dazed. Wyler was alive. He was trying to assimi¬ 
late that fact. He had no appetite for more. 

“Of course,” he granted handsomely, “there has 
been luck in it. ’ ’ But luck, he seemed to hint, is an 
attribute of heroes. Indeed he said: “Don’t you 
think, though, that luck feeds on hard work? 
Mostly, I’m sure; but I can give you an instance to 
the contrary. Not in Manchuria this time, but here 
in London, and, by the way, this is in confidence. 
Plays. They tell me plays are the most desperately 




264 


The Wrong Shadow 


speculative counters on the map. Well, to pleasure 
my wife, I financed a play. Blindly. The manager 
has since admitted to me on the quiet that he’d never 
have dreamed of taking this play on its merits. As 
it was, my wife chose it and paid him to do the work. 
What happens ? Why, the play is so great a success 
that I shall make what would be a fortune to many 
people. More strictly, my wife will make the for¬ 
tune. I gave her the money as I might have given 
her a necklace. That is an example of luck without 
hard work, but I look upon my past hard work as 
having accumulated for me a reserve of luck. I 
shan’t risk it on a play again. I . . . ” 

Insufferable bounder, thought Lord Litherbrow 
whose choice was firmly made. He glanced at Aud¬ 
rey. When she rose, he w r ould go with her to the 
drawing-room and would snatch, before returning, a 
minute in which to make his suggestion that she 
should be chatelaine of Farundell. He would then 
make it a condition of the sale to Bassett, and he 
would be almost happy about Farundell. Knowing 
what Farundell was to escape in Wyler, he would be 
quite happy. 

Audrey, to his surprise, was staring, she was al¬ 
most gaping at Wyler. The incomprehensibility of 
women! He thought of Desdemona and her Moor. 
i 1 This only is the witchcraft I have used; ’ ’ and here 
was another teller of tales who by being his own en¬ 
thusiastic Boswell, fascinated a lady who, he 
thought, should really have seen clearly what was 
the color of this hero. Only Audrey was not think¬ 
ing of Mr. Wyler’s wonder-tale; she was thinking 
of Max. 





Litherbrow House 


265 


She knew their intolerant gallery scorn of the play 
that was paid for, that was not honestly produced 
because a manager believed in it. She knew that the 
salt of Max’s triumph was precisely in his belief 
that “Petronelle,” by an unknown author, had yet 
forced its way to production by sheer artistic merit. 
Cammish had been suborned, his suffrages had been 
bought; and nothing of the subsequent success of 
“Petronelle” would avail to comfort Max if this 
disclosure came to his knowledge. Max must never 
know. 

Farundell had disappeared and Bassett with 
it. Litherbrow House had never been. There were 
only Max and Audrey to protect him. 

Let her make assurance doubly sure. She had 
no doubt that it was Olga of whom he spoke. Still, 
“I wonder,” she said, “if I know your wife, Mr. 
Wyler.” 

This was surprising. His complaint of Olga was 
that she hadn’t, in these years, pushed her way into 
English society. 

“Olga!” he said. “You know Olga?” 

“Yes,” said Audrey and before he had recovered 
from his surprise she had caught Lord Litherbrow’s 
eye and was on her way to the drawing-room, not so 
much in flight from the interrogations of Mr. Wyler 
as because she needed solitude in which to do some 
rapid thinking. 


Ill 


This Wyler was Olga’s Wyler; Olga had put up 
the money for “Petronelle.” The play was a popu- 




266 


The Wrong Shadow 


lar success, and a critical success, approved, ac¬ 
claimed, hall-marked sterling. Then what in the 
name of common sense did it matter whence came the 
money which financed it? 

In common sense it did not matter; but she knew 
that, to Max, it mattered vitally. In his belief, the 
potency of “Petronelle” acting directly upon a the¬ 
ater manager had evoked production; without favor, 
he had achieved. And the action had not been di¬ 
rect; “Petronelle” had been staged not because of 
Mr. CammislPs faith in it, but because of Olga’s 
caprice: the thing was a “job,” and a successful job 
was still a job. 

She could ask herself later about Olga; as to why 
Olga did it and as to whether she was jealous of 
Olga for doing it. The present point was Max; to 
guard his ignorance; to preserve him from a knowl¬ 
edge that might—heavens!—what might it not do to 
a Max ? 

“Miss Evelow,” the mildly embarrassed voice of 
Lord Litherbrow addressed her. 

Audrey started. It is disturbing when one’s mus¬ 
ing unconsciousness of surroundings is, however 
politely, interrupted. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I 
quite thought you’d left the room.” 

“May I for a minute remain to mention to you an 
idea I had about Farundell?” 

With an effort she remembered Farundell—on 
this purely Farundell occasion! “But surely,” she 
said. She must recognize Max as an intruder here, 
she must be loyal in all her thoughts to Mr. Bassett 
on this night of his accession. She was not anxious 
about Bassett who at table had been silent either be- 




Litherbrow House 


267 


cause lie was bored by this Wyler’s stories or be¬ 
cause he was thinking too profoundly about the 
other Wyler to have listened to them at all, but if 
Lord Litherbrow wished to speak to her about Far- 
undell it was her clear duty to give him her undi¬ 
vided attention. ‘ ‘ Surely,” she said. “I’m afraid 
my thoughts were wandering.” 

“In . . . in Manchuria?” he chaffed gently, still 
uneasy at the breathlessness she had seemed to pay 
to Mr. Wyler. 

i 1 Oh! ’ ’ she cried, ‘ 1 didn’t he talk ? Oh, dear! I’m 
disparaging your guest.” 

“Do him good if he heard it, and lots more of it,” 
said Lord Litherbrow, putting candor before cour¬ 
tesy. “Do you know that fellow wants Farundell? 
Don’t be afraid. He isn’t going to get it. But . . . 
is Mr. Bassett?” 

“I hope so,” said Audrey. They had taken that 
so completely for granted since the invitations to 
this dinner came that it was disconcerting to hear it 
put as a question. “Isn’t he?” 

“I must not say that it depends on you, Miss Eve- 
low. That would not be fair. But let me say that I 
shall be much . . . oh, infinitely . . . more comfort¬ 
able about Farundell, and Mr. Bassett if you are able 
to agree to the suggestion I have in mind. ’ ’ 

That sounded almost as if it did, in fact, depend 
upon her. “What is it, Lord Litherbrow?” she 
asked nervously. 

“Nothing alarming,” he assured her. “Rather, I 
imagine, the contrary. The point is simple. Farun¬ 
dell is beautiful. You know it and I do not rely upon 
Mr. Bassett’s knowing it. He has plans which can 





268 


The Wrong Shadow 


be carried out without detriment to the beauty of 
Farundell, but . . . could you, Miss Evelow, be¬ 
come, as it were, trustee of Farundell’s beauty? I 
could, if you will let me, arrange that you are men¬ 
tioned in the conveyances as superintendent, or some 
such word, for life of Farundell.” 

He was pitifully anxious, pleading for his idea. 
Consciously, she felt deep gratitude; he knew, he 
must know, what it would mean to her to live at Far¬ 
undell. Trustee of Farundell’s beauty! A gracious 
office. And to her immense surprise she heard her¬ 
self say, “Lord Litherbrow, I’m very sorry, but I 
can’t do it. I’m going to be married.” 

“My dear young lady,” he said, “don’t say 
you’re sorry. My stupidity is incredible. Actually, 
I never thought of that. ’ ’ 

What she was thinking was, “It’s true. I didn’t 
know it till I said it, but it’s true.” Max had 
pleaded for a certainty and she had said she had no 
certainty to offer him. Well, she was tipped over 
into certainty now and she did not care if, in plain 
common sense she was seeing a molehill as a moun¬ 
tain. Max would see it as a mountain which moved 
to bury beneath its dreadful weight the independ¬ 
ence of his accomplishment, and he must never see; 
she must marry him that he might never see; that, 
even if the avalanche descended, she would be there 
to put her arms and her love about him and to shel¬ 
ter him. 

Was there once a Mr. Bassett, who had brought 
her to Litherbrow House and had some claim upon 
her loyalty? But Litherbrow House was a palace of 
truth, an august, majestical, magical place where the 






Litherbrow House 


269 


scales dropped from one’s eyes, where one saw Bas¬ 
sett as a little absurd and a little middle-aged, and 
Max as—Max. As for loyalty, “Lord Litherbrow,” 
she said. 

He turned, and she realized that he had turned 
away from her and that now he faced her he looked 
pathetically old. “I’m . . . I’m disappointing 
you,” she said. 

“No,” he said and his shoulders lost their weary 
droop, “no, Miss Evelow. You are correcting me. 
I was forgetting life.” 

“I’m failing you,” she insisted as if there was 
some balm for him in her perception that she had 
not come up to expectation. “But Farundeli. Far- 
undell and Mr. Bassett, It did not depend on me!” 

“No. It did not depend on you.” Veritably, 
after Mr. Wyler’s performance at the dinner table, 
it did not depend on her. Bassett should have Far¬ 
undeli though Miss Evelow could not be there to 
guard its beauties. The loquacious Mr. Wyler! He 
preferred Bassett’s babies. Young England! 

“Mr. Bassett shall have Farundeli,” he assured 
her; and she felt herself discharged, exempted from 
a loyalty no longer to be needed of her. She could 
think of Max. 




CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

MR. BASSETT AND MR. WYLER 


I N the dining room a silence fell. Mr. Wyler 
feigned an interest in those painted ancestors of 
Lord Litherbrow whose value in the picture-market 
reflected so gravely on their foresight, and found 
himself attracted, without pretense, by tracing in 
their features a resemblance to those of their 
descendant, Miss Evelow. 

Mr. Bassett crumpled a napkin which took on, un¬ 
der his perspiring hands, the appearance of a dish- 
clout. He had had, thanks to Miss Dolly Wain- 
wright, his temporary and harrowing apprehensions 
of the return of Herbert Wyler, a slouching figure, 
somehow Colonial, in shabby clothes, degraded by 
drink, then, when the fear of that return passed, and 
he was haunted by a ghost, it was by a deplorable 
ghost, a scallywag of a ghost. And if ghosts must 
materialize at supremely awkward moments, they 
might at least materialize reasonably. This was un¬ 
reasonable; an elegant outrage upon an established 
hallucination; he had mental re-adjustments to 
make, beyond a Wyler who was alive, to a Wyler 
who was a guest of Lord Litherbrow, and the re¬ 
adjustment must be rapid. 

Lord Litherbrow might return at any moment and 

270 



Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 271 


before be came, Bassett had to know where he stood 
in the matter of Farandell. He had made an offer 
for Farundell: and the money at his disposal—but 
was it at his disposal? He had to render to this 
truculent exquisite, the new Herbert Wyler, an ac¬ 
count of his stewardship, and if he had failed to 
satisfy that aberration, a Wyler who was dead, and 
down and out before he died, he thought small beer 
of his chances to satisfy this extremely living adept 
in a larger world than his. An awful audit, but, 
because of Farundell, it couldn’t be postponed. 

“Wyler!” he said, and then, either as special 
pleading or because he had once had genuine fond¬ 
ness for this man, “old Bertie!” he pronounced. 

Ferocity, he thought, gleamed behind Mr. Wyler’s 
monocle as he condescended from his exercise in the 
land-marks of heredity. “Wyler, if you please,” he 
said coldly. “I have a distaste for being reminded 
of the past.” The hint appeared to be given that 
“Wyler,” without prefix, approached impertinence. 

“But I’ve got to speak of those old days,” said 
Bassett urgently. 

“The necessity,” was said in Wyler’s indolent 
drawl, “does not make itself evident to me.” 

“No? Then I’ve to make it evident.” Bassett 
was roused. All very well for Audrey to proscribe 
“certain facts in his life” and moderately well for 
him to accept, as a postponement, her ruling, but one 
couldn’t postpone an understanding with a resusci¬ 
tated Wyler. If ghosts wanted to rest easily, they 
shouldn’t materialize themselves. “Look here,” he 
said aggressively, “I didn’t ask you to come to life. 
If you were living, why didn’t you say so?” 






272 


The Wrong Shadow 


i ‘To you?” An Olympian announce his survival 
to a worm ? ‘ i Why ? ’ ’ 

“You don’t know what I’ve suffered.” 

“I regret to hear of your suffering,” said Mr. 
Wyler contemptuously. 

“Through you. Going oft like that in the night. 
Never a word. Leaving me. Poisoning my 
success.” 

“This is incomprehensible. Are you laboring un¬ 
der a grievance against me? Let me make it per¬ 
fectly plain to you that if it relates to the past I 
decline to hear of it. You mention your success. 
No doubt, according to your lights, you have been 
successful.” (A rush-light to the arc-lamp of Mr. 
Wyler.) “Very well. I congratulate you. But de¬ 
tails don’t interest me.” 

“Man, they must. Successful? Yes, but it isn’t 
all my success. It’s partly yours. That night—” 

“Mine!” The magnificent Mr. Wyler was pro¬ 
foundly shocked. That night! The sting was that 
he had never reached any clear recollection of what 
had happened that night, and if this fellow meant 
anything he meant that Wyler was in some way asso¬ 
ciated with Bassett’s Tonic. “I must ask you to 
explain yourself,” he said heavily. 

Bassett noted, with misgiving, this change of 
front. Wyler’s sense of self-interest, he thought, 
was touched; scratch a dandy and you find a money- 
grubber. “I can do that in a sentence,” he said 
miserably. “The formula of Bassett’s Tonic is 
yours. ’ ’ 

His? That amused Mr. Wyler, that small, for¬ 
gotten achievement of his youth which had not 




Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 273 


achieved much. It was like being shown, say by 
one’s old nurse, a model yacht which she assures 
one was made, and not so badly either, by oneself. 
“Really?” he said. “Formulas are cheap.” And 
then an ugly fear struck him. “Do you mention this 
fact on any of your advertising?” he asked without 
the suspicion of a drawl. He imagined this was the 
confession Bassett was trying to make. 

“No,” said Bassett, who thought he was accused 
of wilful concealment. “No, I don’t. But I had 
some small excuse for that. It had been agreed be¬ 
tween us that my name only was to figure. ’ ’ 

“Ah!” Mr. Wyler was re-assured. He was en¬ 
abled, even, to look back tolerantly on the youth, 
Herbert Wyler. That hoy drank whiskey, but he 
had the good taste to hush up his name in connection 
with Bassett. 

“Only,” went on the wretch in the confessional, 
“only by the Wyler Canteen have I approached pub¬ 
lic acknowledgment of the debt I owe to you.” 

“By what?” Wyler was angry. Had the inef¬ 
fable Bassett dragged the name of Wyler into the 
dust raised by the Tonic in spite of the express veto 
of the young Herbert? 

“Well,” Mr. Bassett was morose, “I didn’t go 
looking for your heirs.” 

“My heirs? Why should you?” The heirs of 
whom? Of the inventor of a formula? Inventors 
had no heirs; inventors were tuppence a dozen; he 
knew because he had bought them. He had the supe¬ 
riority to a formula of a man who had commanded 
the brains of many technicians, and he couldn’t, at 
this time of day, think himself back to the other side, 




274 


The Wrong Shadow 


the inventor’s side, of the fence. He was preoccu¬ 
pied solely by his foppish fear of having his name 
connected with a patent medicine. 

“Anyhow, I didn’t look for them. I didn’t be¬ 
cause who could decide what share was theirs ? Like 
a conundrum in Relativity, only worse.” He told 
how he had found the formula, discarded, wrongly 
added up, in the grate and he tried to go on and to 
tell more. 

Mr. Wyler’s interest was languid. “But this Can¬ 
teen?’ ’ he interrupted impatiently. * 4 This use of my 
name?” 

“Don’t you see that you were dead? Fifteen 
years. You’ve preyed on my peace of mind for fif¬ 
teen years. Whenever I thought I’d lived you down 
you caught me. The Canteen was an effort. A good 
use for your money. The Canteen ... ” he looked 
at Wyler, and to his other resentments was added 
another, old but newly felt: the deep resentment of 
the man who, however “indispensably” employed, 
was civilian, against the man of similar years who 
was a fighting soldier. Captain Herbert Wyler, 
M.C.! Damn him, he had all the graces. “It was 
you. You were in the Canadian Army.” 

“Yes. But what—?” 

“Oh,” said Bassett with the bitterness provoked 
by the thought of Wyler’s soldiering; successful at 
that as at all else, “Oh, a matter of three pounds a 
week that I’m paying out on your behalf. ’ ’ 

Wyler noticed, but misread, the bitterness. He 
took its cause to be the sum of three pounds a week, 
Bassett’s contribution, he imagined, to the running 
of a canteen which was, no doubt, an old army hut, 




Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 275 


and the insignificance of the sum increased at once 
his contempt for Bassett and his sense of grievance 
against Lord Litherbrow who had brought him to 
table with Bassett. Detestable to have his name 
given to a hut canteen. “Precisely how is my name 
associated with this canteen?” he asked. 

“A memorial. There are tablets. Your name 
without details.’’ 

“And where is it, may I ask?” 

“ In Walthamstow.’ 9 

“I see.” He saw, with relief, the extreme im¬ 
probability of any identification of Mr. Wyler with 
the late Herbert who was commemorated on an army 
hut in Walthamstow. “Leave the tablets,” he in¬ 
structed. “To remove them would cause comment. 
You will make it plain, should occasion ever arise, 
that the Herbert Wyler to whom they refer is, in 
fact, dead.” Bassett thought he was: he had died a 
sparrow and he had been reincarnated a peacock. 
“He is dead and he was no relation of mine. There 
are no other references to me? No? Then I think 
that will do, Bassett. Shall we change the subject?” 

And the heartaches, the pangs he underwent be¬ 
fore he came to his decision to put Wyler’s name in¬ 
stead of his own on that Canteen! The sacrifice! 
The indignity of submitting, for the honor of Wy¬ 
ler’s name, to the blackmail of Dolly Wainwright! 
All for nothing. For less than nothing. For a 
Wyler who spat upon his Canteen. 

Change the subject? But here was the man who 
had tortured him when, by a word, any time these 
years, he could have declared himself. “Look here, 
though,” he said, “you knew about me.” 





276 


The Wrong Shadow 


“By your signs you were manifest, my dear 
Bassett.” 

Damn his superiority! But that could wait; there 
was Farundell; there was the practical problem of 
the money. “Well but,” he said, “money.” 

“Money?” Mr. Wyler raised his eyebrows. He 
spoke the word, as if it soiled his lips, in pained pro¬ 
test at a solecism. 

It was intolerable. What but money had been the 
essence of his table-talk? Ah, he might have an¬ 
swered, but there is money and money; money as we 
aristocrats of finance understand the word and 
money as you others think of it. 

“Yes,” said Bassett curtly, “the money from the 
Tonic. I will show you my books and—” 

“And what have they to do with me?” 

“It’s your formula.” 

Mr. Wyler considered that more closely than be¬ 
fore. Organization made a business, but the busi¬ 
ness of a patent medicine had to have a formula to 
be organized and it seemed that he had provided it. 
One might . . . ? But no, one did not. One had 
become an American; the citizen, in particular, of a 
Dry State; one dated, for serious purposes, from 
that event and one was proud of one’s life since 
then. To inherit from the past, a squalid past, was 
to corrupt the present. A tonic? Conceivably con¬ 
taining alcohol. He daren’t ask. The unique 
achievement of the young Herbert Wyler intimi¬ 
dated him: he felt rancorous towards Bassett the 
remembrancer. 

“I wouldn’t touch your money with a barge-pole,” 
he said. A memorable utterance, he thought; it 




Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 277 


would hurt Bassett shrewdly; it would demonstrate 
to Bassett a distinction about which he had been 
dull; then he wondered if the coarse creature would 
after all be sufficiently stung by his scornful re¬ 
nunciation and he added viciously, “For myself.’’ 

“But it isn’t my money,” cried Bassett. “Some 
of it’s yours.” Quittance? This wasn’t quittance 
but an insult. He itched to ram the words back 
down Wyler’s throat; he hadn’t known he possessed 
such talent for hatred. 

“Shall we say,” jeered Wyler, “a royalty of a 
shilling a bottle on all sales? No. But seriously, 
let us say ... let us say ...” He wanted to 
name a sum which Bassett would disburse with 
anguish: high enough and not impossibly, arguably 
high: and he remembered Bassett’s bitterness over 
three pounds a week. The fellow advertised widely: 
too widely, Wyler guessed. He recalled Bassett’s 
passion for advertisement; he imagined him carried 
away by that craze for self-assertion and he decided 
that Bassett’s advertising was disproportionate to 
his gains. “ Yes, ” he concluded, ‘ 6 1 acknowledge my 
claim upon you. For myself, I take nothing.” 

“But ...” said Bassett. He wanted the im¬ 
possible: he wanted justice. Honor! Where was 
the satisfaction to honor when Wyler took nothing? 
They were duellists on the field and Bassett had 
fired when the handkerchief dropped: he had fired 
and missed: and Wyler was pointing his pistol to 
the sky and refusing to aim at his opponent. 

“Wait,” said Wyler. “I say I take nothing for 
myself. But you used my formula and you are go¬ 
ing to pay.” 




278 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Yes,” said Bassett eagerly. “Though I’ve paid 
for fifteen years.” 

Squealing, thought Wyler who was enjoying him¬ 
self. “And now you will pay again. For the last 
time. I hope after tonight never to see or hear of 
you again.” 

“But you wdll inspect my books.” 

“Your books!” Bid grown men read nursery- 
tales? “No. You will pay a fine. Have you a 
check-book with you?” 

He had, in the anticipation of leaving Lord Lith- 
erbrow a deposit on the purchase-price of Farun- 
dell and thought it unlikely that he would have any 
deposit to leave now. “Very well. Write. The 
United Kingdom Alliance for the suppression of 
Liquor Traffic. The sum of,” he paused cruelly, “of 
five thousands pounds.” 

Bassett looked up: speech was beyond him. The 
duellist Wyler was no longer pointing his weapon 
to the sky; he had aimed and he had hit—with a 
missile fired from a pop-gun. It was thus, it was as 
something derisory, that Bassett thought of the larg¬ 
est sum which Wyler imagined it reasonable to name 
as a fine; his gasp was born of indignation. 

Watching him, Wyler assumed that five thousand 
pounds were a knock-out blow. That had been his 
intention; to scourge the man who had reminded 
him of that tickish achievement of his youth, the 
formula. The fellow should not wriggle out of it, 
either. He had asked for it. The richly lacquered 
drawl of Mr. Wyler addressed the ceiling. “How,” 
he asked of it, “would one define a charlatan? This 
little Bassett who protests in a large voice his eager- 





Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 279 


ness to pay, this little droll with the crumpled shirt- 
front who proposes in w r ords to pay the price of 
honor and ... 79 

“Mr. Wyler, will you take your check V 9 

“Ah,” said Wyler with deep satisfaction. He pic¬ 
tured little Bassett running frantically next morn¬ 
ing to all and sundry in his efforts to borrow money 
to meet the check. 

And for Bassett it was over. He had paid, a lit¬ 
tle in money and a great deal more in insults. He 
accepted his release and, of course, no papers need 
pass between them. There was nothing susceptible 
of proof. He had paid for fifteen years and he had 
finished paying now. The account was closed and 
he was free. 

He felt clean. And Farundell? He had never 
wanted Farundell so much. Farundell, like himself, 
was free of Wyler. It wouldn’t (thank God!) be a 
Wyler Sanatorium, but it would be a sanatorium, 
and not only of the children he would send them, but 
of him. The assurance of his integrity, of his single 
purpose in desiring to make people healthy. 

That was it: the integrity of his motive. That 
was where Farundell came in as the indispensable 
preliminary to Audrey. Till now, anything that he 
had done had been polluted by Wyler; Farundell 
was post-Wyler and it was pre-Audrey. He had 
wallowed in Wyler for too long to feel himself un¬ 
spotted without some signal act, if it were only of 
thanksgiving, to mark his restoration. Farundell 
bought and endowed; the whole gesture; and after 
it, Audrey, Audrey. There was too much still to do 
for him to make merry over his release; he was limp, 




28 o 


The Wrong Shadow 


with spirits numbed as a body is numbed when it 
stumbles from the grip of shackles; limp and de¬ 
voutly thankful. 

The cynical Wyler inspected the fly caught in his 
web. This little Bassett, he thought, was going to 
have a devil of a difficulty to meet his check, and it 
was not for Wyler, unrelenting to the man who 
couldn’t let bygones be bygones, the man who had 
stirred up dark suspicions of the alcoholic guilt of 
a Wyler-invented formula, to make things easy for 
him: nor was it for Wyler to stand on ceremony in 
the house of Lord Litherbrow. Both as buyer of 
Farundell and as company for Bassett, Litherbrow 
had made a convenience of him. 

There was a bureau in the room and he found an 
envelope. He addressed it to the Secretary of the 
United Kingdom Alliance, he rang the bell and told 
the servant who responded to post the letter at once; 
not to wait, but immediately to go out to the nearest 
pillar-box. 

“The last post,” he mentioned to Bassett, “may 
have been collected when I leave here, and I want 
that check presented in the morning.” Bassett 
stared at him in amazement, and Wyler’s eyes lin¬ 
gered voluptuously over the victim to punctilious¬ 
ness who had landed himself into a financial scrape. 
“And now, my dear Bassett, now that we have writ¬ 
ten ‘ Finis ’ over that episode, shall we really change 
the subject? Would you for instance care to tell 
me why I find you at Litherbrow House ? ’ ’ He per¬ 
mitted himself that curiosity. 

“Oh,” said Bassett not at all displeased at the 
chance to assert his importance, “I’m buying a place 




Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 281 


in the country from Litherbrow. A place called 
Farundell.’’ 

4 4 The hell you are, ’’ said Wyler. He dropped his 
monocle and his drawl. He was to be perceived, 
through a superlative dinner-jacket, as the man who 
had wrung a high price from a Japanese syndicate 
for chances which were less than rights. “But 
you’re not. I get Farundell. ,, 


II 

When Lord Litherbrow returned to the dining¬ 
room, it was to find his guests staring at each other 
in taciturn hostility. Wyler chewed bitter cud. He 
had been fooled, and by Bassett! 

The superfluous Bassett, officiously recalling his 
past, obtusely avowing that he had imperiled the 
perfection of Wyler’s immaculate present by stick¬ 
ing up his name on a shanty in Walthamstow, was a 
case for correction; to be warned against repetition 
of his offenses and penalized that he might not for¬ 
get the warning. And that disposed of Bassett, the 
poor boob; it didn’t, calamitously, dispose of the 
Bassett who was not a poor boob, of the Bassett who 
was so startling a candidate for Farundell. And, 
in Bassett, ecstasy faded. Wyler wanted Farundell 
and that created a new situation. 

Litherbrow was actually in the room when, un¬ 
controllably driven by integrity, Bassett said, “Look 
here, Wyler, my books—” He wanted a real re¬ 
lease; he wanted to pay Wyler a half share of his 
profits from the first. 




282 


The Wrong Shadow 


“Damn your books,” said Wyler. “That mat¬ 
ter^ closed.’’ He was asked to eat his words; it 
was suggested that he who would not touch Bassett’s 
money with a barge-pole should finger his ledgers, he 
supposed, in Walthamstow, probably in sight of that 
wretched edifice, the Wyler Canteen! It was hinted 
that the fatness of the ledgers would cause him to 
reverse a magnificent utterance. “Lord Lither- 
brow,” he said, “you proposed to me through Mr. 
Edwardes a price for Farundell. I offer you double 
that price.” 

The retort trembled on Bassett’s lips. If Wyler 
wanted to make an auction of it, the endowment of 
Farundell certainly would sutler, but he needn’t be 
outbid at double the price asked. Then, miserably, 
he kept silence. He couldn’t bid against Wyler with 
money justly Wyler’s. 

“I beg your pardon,” said Lord Litherbrow. He 
sat rather suddenly at the head of the table and 
poured port with a hand that was not steady. He 
had detested this dinner from the first, but he hadn’t 
foreseen the development of his guests’ discovering 
themselves as rivals for Farundell. 

Mr. Wyler eyed the port grimly. “I think you 
heard me,” he said. 

“I did. But the price has not been in question, 
Mr. Wyler!” 

“I have raised the question.” He had also, he 
hinted, raised the price. 

There was a silence. Cupidity was not a motive 
of Lord Litherbrow; but he proposed not to mince 
words with Edwardes about this damnable dinner of 
his contriving, and saw the interview turned into a 





gruelling lecture for himself if Edwardes heard— 
and he would hear; that man heard everything—that 
he had refused a doubled price for Farundell from 
the applicant whom Edwardes favored. Edwardes 
made so much of money; he wore a velvet glove on 
a grasping hand; he made one feel uncomfortably 
schoolboyish when one tried to insist to him that, 
really, money wasn’t a fine issue. 

Well, Edwardes must give him a bad quarter of 
an hour. Bassett was Litherbrow’s choice for Far¬ 
undell ; it had been mentioned, as a settled decision, 
to Miss Evelow. “I think we will not discuss it, Mr. 
Wyler,” he said. 44 It is not, to my mind, a point 
open to discussion. ’’ 

“Perhaps,” propounded Wyler, if it was not a 
threat, “I had better see your man of business in 
the morning.” 

“It would be useless.” He resented, because it 
was so nearly true, the suggestion that he was to be 
dictated to by Edwardes. “I do not chaffer about 
Farundell. The price mentioned is believed to be a 
just one by Mr. Edwardes and the independent val¬ 
uers he has consulted. It is not by offering me more 
than the just price that I am to be induced to give 
preference to one applicant over the rest.” 

Then the price stood and Bassett felt his jaw set 
firmly. Physically and financially it set; morally he 
doubted its steadfastness, because only by giving up 
the endowment of Farundell could he buy it with 
money of his indefeasible own. He doubted and 
fought against his doubt. The purchase money, by 
itself, could be taken from the Bassett and Wyler 
pool without doing injury to Wyler’s half-share of 


284 


The Wrong Shadow 


the whole: and wasn’t half a gesture better than 
none? Farundell bought, and to be endowed out of 
the future profits of Leviathan, was better than no 
Farundell at all; and didn’t he, by buying it, land a 
blow at Wyler which could not be called foul play? 
In spite of everything he was still in the market for 
Farundell, at the market-price. 

Wyler looked sourly at Litherbrow, that improb¬ 
able peer who refused twice the price he asked. As 
mere recklessness it was incredible; it would have 
shown in other ways and the man would have been 
under restraint. “You’re making excuses,” he said. 

“Isn’t my lapse rather that I have not made ex¬ 
cuses, Mr. Wyler? I offer to you gentlemen my 
apology. I left you, and while I was away you came 
to the knowledge that you were both desirous to buy 
Farundell.” He was conscious that this was not 
precisely his lapse. His lapse had been to listen to 
Edwardes and to invite them together and, rather 
hurriedly, he went on, “Mr. Bassett will, I think, 
understand my absence when I tell him that I was 
speaking to Miss Evelow about Farundell. I was 
making a suggestion, but ... it appears you are 
shortly to lose her.” 

“To lose her?” 

6 ‘ She told me of her approaching marriage. ’ ’ 

He was fighting his way on skates up a descend¬ 
ing moving staircase of ice which fell away at the 
bottom into an unfathomable gulf and, of course, he 
was going to be swallowed up; but first he had to 
reach the top of the staircase because only there 
could he say what must be said. It was a reeling, 
rollicking glissade that staggered like a ship in a 





Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 285 


typhoon and threatened every moment to throw him 
off into the pit from which he would never rise again, 
and he had to climb and keep his footing while the 
tipsy ice rushed under him. He made fantastic ef¬ 
forts, immense, exquisitely painful, to reach firm 
ground at the top. He had one foot, then both on 
solid earth. The voice of Mr. Bassett was heard, 
calmly, “Yes. Miss Evelow’s marriage. I am los¬ 
ing her. But that is not the point for you, my lord. 
The point is that, owing to what has taken place be¬ 
tween Mr. Wyler and myself, I am no longer in the 
market for Farundell.” 

“My lord,” asked Wyler in a voice of velvet, “are 
there any others!” 

There were not, but, “I shall not write to Ed- 
wardes tonight,” thought Lord Litherbrow. Far- 
undell had till, say, eleven next morning in which to 
save herself from Mr. Wyler, and meantime he 
would be scrupulously non-committal towards that 
gentleman. 


Ill 

The arch of Mr. Bassett’s plans had a keystone, 
Audrey; the keystone had refused its office; and for 
him the catastrophe had the unexpectedness of a 
cosmic accident which came unheralded; it was as if 
the tail of an unannounced comet had flicked the 
globe which held Farundell; a sanatorium; his free¬ 
dom from Wyler; Audrey; and had dissolved them 
into gas. 

Alcohol, Mr. Wyler might have told him, inhibits 
the higher functional centers; and so with the cup 




286 


The Wrong Shadow 


which after many a slip he had imagined held firmly 
to his lips. Its breaking left Mr. Bassett a mere 
shell in human form surrounding vacancy. But he 
had the belief that his behavior was normal. He 
was a phenomenon which, though dead, had got itself 
out of Litherbrow House, without betraying its con¬ 
dition, into a motor-car with Miss Evelow and had 
left Miss Evelow at Claverton Street. The automa¬ 
ton, masquerading as a man, had not been detected; 
it had deceived with success. 

If it deceived, it had had easy dupes. Wyler, 
Lord Litherbrow and Audrey had each their sepa¬ 
rate thoughts, and there was nothing remarkable, 
after Mr. Bassett’s declaration, in his taking him¬ 
self off as quickly as possible from Litherbrow 
House. And Audrey, thinking of Max, was far from 
observing Mr. Bassett closely. But his success was 
defective; she was not so held by Max as not to re¬ 
member that Lord Litherbrow had promised Farun- 
dell to Bassett. 

He might, naturally, take it solemnly, but he was 
taking it silently, stupidly, and Audrey was puzzled. 
The last thing she wanted was to repeat her mistake 
of the Grand Western’s restaurant; she did not want 
to think that he was drunk; she preferred not to 
think at all. Nevertheless, when she closed the front 
door, she stood inside it for a moment listening. She 
heard Mr. Bassett dismiss his car, she heard the car 
turn and drive off towards town and she heard Bas¬ 
sett’s footsteps going in the direction of the river. 
She opened her door. 

He walked queerly, jerkily, as the best lubricated 
automata will walk. But Audrey did not know that 





Mr. Bassett and Mr. Wyler 287 


he was an automaton. She closed her door softly 
and followed him. At the bottom of Claverton 
Street he turned East, and Audrey hesitated. That 
unreclaimed hyphen, between Westminster and Bat¬ 
tersea Bridges, which links two noble Embankments, 
has its sinister aspects, and Mr. Bassett looked, at a 
distance, responsible enough. But she decided to go 
on until, at any rate, he did something definite. 

There ought by all the rules to have been a serious 
accident in Bridge Street. Mr. Bassett stepped into 
the traffic as if it wasn’t there and crossed the road 
with unseeing, unhearing disregard of the screaming 
brakes on taxi wheels and the curses of taxi drivers. 
He went serenely on, and Audrey, held up herself 
by the traffic, missed him for a moment. The autom¬ 
aton was seen by a policeman to lean upon the para¬ 
pet, staring across the Thames to where a sky-sign 
flashed regularly by the County Hall. 

One saw first the lighted effigy of a lank pantaloon, 
a miserable weed of a man, and below him the leg¬ 
end, “Before taking Bassett’s Tonic.” That van¬ 
ished and was replaced by a hefty stalwart in a 
tiger-skin, the Leviathan figure of the hoardings, 
“After taking Bassett’s Tonic.” The Colossus ap¬ 
peared to raise its arm, and its muscles swelled, pul¬ 
sating with light. It was an obscene spectacle, 
dwindled by familiarity in the eyes of the policeman 
to the commonplace of a nightly land-mark. He 
failed to see why the gentleman stared at it so hard. 

A suicide actually within hail of Scotland Yard? 
It seemed improbably impudent, but Mr. Bassett was 
in evening dress and sub-editors might blue-pencil 
the story of some derelict’s attempted suicide, but 




288 


The Wrong Shadow 


an attempt in evening dress should provoke a head¬ 
line and a reference to the smart young officer whose 
zeal prevented a tragedy. Mr. Bassett watched the 
sky-sign with a fascinated stare and the policeman 
watched Mr. Bassett. Big Ben struck twelve. 

With a hollow groan, Bassett’s head sank to the 
gritty stone. He hung, collapsed like a bolster, 
across the parapet. The policeman covered the dis¬ 
tance between them. “Beg pardon, sir,” he an¬ 
nounced his presence. 

“The voice of God,” said Mr. Bassett; but he was 
not referring to the policeman. “Out! All, all out! 
The heavens have spoken.” A palsied arm gestic¬ 
ulated towards the Surrey side, and the policeman 
glanced across the river. 

“The sky-sign?” he said, humoring his gentleman 
tolerantly. “Yes, it’s out. They switch off at mid¬ 
night. Waste of electricity after that.” 

“They?” said Mr. Bassett vaguely; then, “of 
course. My own orders, ’ 9 he mentioned briskly to a 
skeptical policeman. 

A hopeful taxi stopped by the curb and decided 
the policeman to treat Mr. Bassett not as a wander¬ 
ing lunatic, but as a gentleman slightly in liquor. 
“You’ll be going home now, sir,” he encouraged. 

“Yes,” said Audrey. “I’ll see him home, officer.” 




CHAPTER FIFTEEN 


THE DROPPED PASSENGER 


* ^TV/riSS EVELOW,” said the ex-automaton. 

She ignored him for his good. “We’ll 
keep the hood down,” she told the driver. “It’s a 
warm night.” 

“Yes, miss. Where to?” 

“That’s it,” said Audrey. “Well, just drive. 
Round Regent’s Park will do. I’ll tell you when to 
stop.” They might, amongst them, have modern¬ 
ized Mrs. Appleford, but Mr. Bassett in Audrey’s 
room at midnight was open to misconstruction, and 
so was Audrey at his flat. There was a flaw in the 
resources of modern civilization, and the taxi filled 
the breach. Humanity failed and taximanity pre¬ 
vailed. It offered reputable privacy; it removed Mr. 
Bassett from the riverside and provided fresh air 
which was possibly all the cure he needed; it found 
her, if his case was worse than she supposed, an ally 
in the driver. 

His case was one of recuperation from a lightning 
stroke: he had a glib smile and a slick half crown for 
the policeman and he saw Audrey into the taxi be¬ 
fore he got in himself; he hadn’t, as she’d expected, 
to be hoisted in like a sack of potatoes. But he felt 

himself burned out; he found solace in surrendering 

289 


2QO 


The Wrong Shadow 


himself to a will just now, at any rate, stronger than 
his own; and the first symptoms of his reviving con¬ 
sciousness were pleasurable ones. It gripped his 
very entrails to be driving through London in the 
sultry night with Audrey by his side. She was the 
lady he had loved and lost, but she was Audrey. 

“I didn’t expect,” he began. 

“No,” she said, “but that’s the bad taste linger¬ 
ing. Wait a bit.” She put her hand, medicinally, 
on his arm and hope unconquerable stirred within the 
breast of a romantic gentleman. It was in him to 
believe that he had heard wrongly in Litherbrow 
House. She was going to be married. To whom? 
The lights of Trafalgar Square shone on her hand, 
and there was no ring on it. Then Litherbrow had 
been too definite; she had merely mentioned an an¬ 
ticipation to him. An anticipation of ... of Fran¬ 
cis Bassett! Would she have followed him if she 
hadn’t cared? Would they be riding at midnight? 
Always when they had ridden before, it was in his 
car, it was pretended, thinly but safely, that they 
were Mr. Bassett with his secretary who was work¬ 
ing overtime: and in a taxi there was no pretense, 
there was Bassett aflame with optimism, and Audrey 
silent because she sought to give him time to tran- 
quilize himself. 

Presently she took her hand away and, “Now,” 
she said, “do you care to tell me?” If he talked 
himself tired, he would talk himself happy, she 
thought. 

‘ ‘ Tell you! ’ ’ He was asked—positively he was in¬ 
vited—to make love. He turned, no laggard, no dis- 
guiser of intention, to look at her. 




The Dropped Passenger 291 


“It is clear,’’ said Audrey coolly, “that you had 
some shock to-night. I thought if you cared to tell 
me about it—everything; it doesn’t matter how long 
it takes—that you might feel relieved.” 

“Everything!” She was everything. 

“Had it,” she suggested, “to do with Mr. Wy¬ 
ler?” She had experience of the formidable effect 
that name could have upon him. 

Yes, it had to do with Wyler and he was glad to 
be reminded of it. He had been nearly putting the 
cart before the horse, he had nearly made love be¬ 
fore he had made confession. But things were going 
very well, they were going so well that he could af¬ 
ford to emphasize the difference between their pres¬ 
ent smoothness and the blank wall against which he 
ran himself last time. “Yes,” he said, “but you 
stopped me from speaking of them when I tried to 
tell you before.” 

“I? When?” 

“Why, in the office.” 

The office! “Certain facts in his life.” The 
phrase came back to her, his phrase which she had 
chosen to resent as an affront to her modernity. She 
winced to think that she had misunderstood. 
Messily perverted a simple phrase. She turned her 
head away, as if her blush at such a cause must have 
a phosphorescent quality. “I remember,” she said. 
“But you’ll tell me now?” It was open to him, if 
he wished, to talk all night to a lady doing penance 
for transgression. 

And, almost, he did talk all of a short summer 
night. (“Say, if you’re homeless, I ain’t,” the 
driver had protested once, and “Stop the engine and 





292 


The Wrong Shadow 


be paid for sleeping’’ was Bassett’s reply). There 
was manve in the sky before he had done, and, Aud¬ 
rey thought, color more crude than mauve in his 
story. 

“Snobby Price,” she murmured once. 

‘ 4 What?” he asked. 

“Did I speak aloud? It was nothing.” But he 
reminded her of Snobby Price in the Salvation 
Army Shelter and Snobby’s. “You come and listen 
to the converted painter.” Bassett was a painter. 
Either in the fervor of self-pity in the telling or, 
which was worse, in the years of unchecked fever, he 
was bedaubing his facts. The facts were a hot¬ 
house bloom, and as he narrated them they were an 
unhealthy bloom dipped in lurid dye. Fresh air, she 
judged, would wither them without hurting him; he 
wasn’t Rappaccini’s daughter; his case was not be¬ 
yond the curable. 

She let him have his say; words were a safety- 
valve, she thought. He mentioned honor, a patience- 
testing word for women. Men and their fine shades, 
men and their points of honor! There was Max who 
would be miserable if he learned that a woman had 
paid for his play which was now enriching her. 
There was Bassett made miserable for fifteen years 
by a scrap of waste-paper picked out of a grate. 
Points of honor! Points of casuistry! Aerate 
them with a sanitary breath of common sense, and 
where were they? It occurred to her that she was not 
recommending aeration to Max, that in fact aera¬ 
tion was the last thing she meant should happen to 
his point, and “Well,” she answered herself 
vehemently, “I love him, don’t I? I can humor hii 




The Dropped Passenger 293 


funny little ways.” But she wouldn’t humor Bas¬ 
sett’s. Aeration for him. 

“You’re making all this fuss,” she said, “because 
that formula is tangible.” 

It was tangible: a yellowing scrap of cheap paper 
with faded pencil marks in his safe at Walthamstow. 
He wanted, if she doubted him, to describe it. He 
could show it her. 

She moved impatiently. “Oh, can you only see a 
thing that’s tangible!” she asked—of him whose 
very trouble was that he had been tyrannized by the 
intangible for fifteen years! 

“But I have,” he said. “I’ve seen—” 

“Oh, yes,” she said. “The spook of Mr. Wyler. 
It’s queer of you, the apostle of health! It seems to 
me that it’s health for other people that you believe 
in. That spook! Just being morbid.” 

“Why didn’t he let me know he was alive!” Mr. 
Bassett voiced a grievance. 

“I should guess because he was too busy piling up 
the money he owes you.” 

“He owes me!” She bewildered him. 

“Yes,” said Audrey firmly. “You began too late 
with your intangibilities. You began after the 
event. You didn’t see, and you haven’t seen yet, 
what came before the spook.” 

“The formula came,” he insisted. 

“Yes, for you. And for him! Because you were 
partners you feel you owe him a half share of all 
you’ve made. If you were his partner, he was yours. 
He owes you a half share of all he’s made and to 
judge by Mr. Wyler’s table-talk, he’s made more 
than you. If you and he were equal sharers in the 





294 


The Wrong Shadow 


gains of that night, he owes you half of the differ¬ 
ence between what you ’ve made and what he’s made. 
Don’t you see that you started him that night? You 
tapped a reservoir in him which neither of you knew 
was there. You gave him an intangible key and he 
gave you a tangible key.” 

“I daresay I gave him a clout on the head,” said 
Mr. Bassett with dour humor. 

4 ‘There you are, then,” said Audrey, as if a clout 
on the head was a fair exchange for the formula. 
“Are you going to make him pay his debts to you?” 

She wore the bright air of one who has driven 
home an unanswerable argument; but she wore it 
like a cloak. In her own mind, indeed, there were 
no doubts. There was a clean-cut Bassett v. Wyler 
issue, and Wyler was debtor to Bassett. He owed 
his impetus to Bassett, and Audrey, examining that 
decision critically, testing it for prejudice or illogi¬ 
cality, could find no flaw in it. The facts were good 
enough for anything; they were good enough, cer¬ 
tainly, to deserve precise and convincing expression 
and she doubted if her expression had been either 
precise or convincing. Facts weren’t the less true 
because they were subtle, but this truth of hers 
seemed to translate badly into words. She trusted 
a good deal to his weariness and to the livery of 
confidence she wore. 

“And certainly,” said Bassett reflectively, waiv¬ 
ing as a rhetorical point her suggestion that he 
should go debt-collecting from Wyler, “certainly he 
clouted my head. ’ ’ 

“Yes,” said Audrey. “You see? You were the 
anvil on which he forged his future.” 




The Dropped Passenger 295 


“Ah,” said Bassett, “ah!” He gave tongue like 
a hound which picks up the scent. Her phrase (how 
she thanked her stars for it—that formula to catch 
a formula) seized him so that there seemed no longer 
anything in doubt; it carried conviction to a tired 
man prejudiced in favor of any phrase «which fell 
from this lady’s lips. He had kept his conscience 
like a mistress and that Audrey routed it had pecul¬ 
iar propriety. “Then you think, you really think 
that I can buy Farundell?” 

“Can? You must. Never a doubt about it.” 
And, she might have added, quickly. Quickly, be¬ 
fore the bloom was off her phrase, quickly before 
second thoughts sicklied or clarified (whichever it 
might be) his judgment. 

When Leviathan was young, struggling for foot¬ 
ing in a world glutted with patent medicines, Bassett 
had, no doubt, had strenuous days, but she knew 
very well from her experiences in the office that 
Leviathan grown-up, organized, secure, was no full 
tenant of his mind. He had let Wyler grow as an 
abscess, and Farundell was the knife. Farundell, 
both the place and the idea, was aeration. 

And Farundell had meaning for them all. For 
her, it was the end of a chapter; it finished the vague 
entanglement with Bassett. There were three travel¬ 
ers in a railway compartment, herself, Max and Bas¬ 
sett, and at a station Bassett got out and left the 
others to go on. But he must buy Farundell; other¬ 
wise he might only have changed compartments; he 
might still be in the train with Max and her. 

Farundell, the destined step to Audrey, and Aud¬ 
rey by his side bidding him, urging him to take the 




2q6 


The Wrong Shadow 


step! The hell of cast mistresses could receive his 
mistress, conscience. He wasn’t of that world now, 
he—. The flyer crashed. “But,” he said in panic. 
“I can’t. I cried off with Lord Litherbrow.” 

“You told me that,” said Audrey and got down, 
rather stiffly, from the standing taxi to rouse the 
dozing driver. She felt chilly, and a dress con¬ 
structed for dancing is not inapt for other exercis- 
ings; it tallied with the fantastic external occur¬ 
rences of this night that a lady might have been seen 
on the pavement of the Outer Circle in Regent’s 
Park doing such physical jerks as are seemly in an 
expensive trifle of a frock and that presently she 
should have been joined in that blood-warming ex¬ 
ertion by a gentleman whose shirt-front was already 
scandalous. They might have been, but they were 
not, seen; the residents of Cambridge Terrace did 
not break their usual rule of being asleep at three 
a. m.; the driver was professionally incurious and, 
besides, he also was asleep. He woke to find Aud¬ 
rey shaking him, and to hear her give him her 
address. 

“That’s better,” she said as they sped south, 
blood racing in their veins. 

“But I withdrew my offer for Farundell,” he re¬ 
minded her. 

“I wonder,” said Audrey, “if Lord Litherbrow 
will give me breakfast. I shall be calling on him 
early . 9 9 

II 

Some hours later, Audrey Evelow, being at that 
age and in that condition when the loss of a night’s 




The Dropped Passenger 297 


sleep leaves no scars, rang the bell of a villa in Walt¬ 
hamstow. Her appearance announced with what of 
emphasis resided in a light summer frock that this 
was not her day for going to the office; but both in 
person and by telephone she had done satisfying 
business. 

Through the night antipathy to Wyler grew on 
Litherbrow; he prayed—the word is used exactly— 
to be delivered from his grasp. Then Audrey came, 
and the servants might think what they liked of her 
calling at that hour, but for him she was sent in 
answer to his prayers, she spoke, not for herself, but 
as the vehicle of Farundell’s own voice. He asked 
no questions and he had no doubts. Enough for him 
that the offer of Mr. Bassett was renewed; misgiv¬ 
ings about Bassett were burnt up by certainties 
about Wyler and the messenger who carried Lord 
Litherbrow’s uncharacteristically firm instructions 
to the office of Mr. Edwardes had actually to wait for 
that establishment to be opened for the day. 

For Audrey, her fellow-traveler, Mr. Bassett, 
stepped definitely to the platform—was seen to leave 
the station—when she telephoned and heard his ex¬ 
ultant promise to go at once to Edwardes. It meant 
that he hadn’t lapsed to second thoughts, that her 
formula held, that, tonic against tonic, hers bettered 
Wyler’s. That might not last, and Audrey was in¬ 
different because Farundell would last. Farundell, 
its purchase, its endowment, its administration, were 
morbidity’s sure antidote, and a liberated Mr. Bas¬ 
sett could go his ways in health without her. She 
had no apprehension of that other function of Far¬ 
undell, the stepping-stone to Audrey, but if Bassett 




2gS 


The Wrong Shadow 


was jubilant on the telephone it is to be hazarded 
that he was Hot cpck-a-hoop so much over Wyler cast 
down or over Farundell his as over Audrey who was 
by these presents about to be his. 

Then there was Olga and with her too, after some 
hesitation and some self-accusations of cowardice, 
she dealt by telephone. “Do you want it to be 
known that you financed ‘Petronelle’?” she asked, 
hoping that her telephone voice sounded as unrecog¬ 
nizable to Olga as Olga’s did to her. 

“Who does know? Who’s that speaking?” Olga 
was startled. 

“Are you sure,” came the other voice, “that no¬ 
body knows? I know. Doesn’t the author know?” 

“I’ll kill Cammish for this,” said Olga. 

Audrey laughed. “Don’t kill Cammish. He 
didn’t tell me. Tell Mr. Wyler not to boast about his 
luck. ’ ’ 

“Who are you?” was shrieked into the instru¬ 
ment. 

Audrey rang off. As the thing had luckily gone, 
she had drawn all she needed to know from Olga 
and she wasn’t displeased to have put a second spoke 
in Mr. Wyler’s wheel. He would begin badly a bad 
day. Olga would quickly know who had telephoned 
when she attacked her husband for an indiscretion— 
Audrey wanted her to know; and she gathered from 
Olga’s tone that the indiscretion of Mr. Wyler was 
not likely to be repeated. 

She stood outside the telephone box, and let two 
’buses pass her. Not that they were full, but why, 
having guarded Max from a disclosure galling to 




The Dropped Passenger 299 


his pride, must she marry him in order to guard him 
from it? Hadn’t she, last night, very greatly exag¬ 
gerated the consequences to him of that disclosure, 
even if it were made? In daylight her fears for him 
seemed grotesque and . . . “Queer,” she thought. 
“I take my bath cold and I don’t stand shivering 
before it.” She had a plunge to make now and she 
was balking at it, she was splitting hairs, she was 
re-examining the occasion which had turned all of 
her to Max instead of going simply to him. She 
climbed a ’bus. 


Ill 

It was made clear to Audrey that the fame of the 
author, Peterkin, had not reached the ears of his 
landlady in Walthamstow. If he hadn’t told her, 
how should it? Aberdeen is nearer than Waltham¬ 
stow to the London where artistic reputations are 
made. (Lost reputations are another matter; bad 
news travels fast, but not too fast to be read in the 
evening papers.) 

“I’m glad to see any friend of his,” said this lady 
accenting the “any” to indicate a case so bad that 
even a feminine friend might help. “Sits in his 
room all day. The room’s a sight and it ain’t my 
fault. I’m not allowed to dust. I’ve had my money 
regular so far, and I’m not complaining for myself, 
but where’s the money coming from when he don’t 
go out to work?” None but the criminal, she hinted, 
spend daylight at home; perhaps she thought his 
writing the prentice hours of a forger. 




300 


The Wrong Shadow 


“I’ll go in,” said Audrey. 

“Well,” the landlady was grateful, but caution¬ 
ary, “be careful.” 

Audrey reminded herself of her guess “Achilles 
sulking in his tent” and felt, if not intimidated, cer¬ 
tainly adventurous, as if she were about to break 
with prying eyes into the workshop of some secret 
process. But it wasn’t, she corrected herself, with 
prying eyes; it was with privileged eyes. She 
opened the door and went in. 

She saw Max making a little diagram at a table 
strewn with chaotic papers on a powdering of ciga¬ 
rette ash. An unaccountable white film covered half 
his face; his hair was wildly ruffled and he was in the 
undress, perhaps sensibly that day, of shirt and 
trousers. He looked up vacantly. “Eh?” he said. 
“Did you knock?” 

“No,” said Audrey. “I came in.” 

1 i Oh, it’s you, ’ ’ he growled. ‘ ‘ Sit down and don’t 
speak for five minutes.” She took the nearest chair. 
“Not there. Behind me. Don’t breathe.” 

Laughter, that unseemly mirth, nerve-born, which 
makes one find something comic in a funeral, all 
but choked her as she went obediently to be neither 
seen nor heard. For a full quarter of an hour, noth¬ 
ing happened. Max brooded over his diagram. 
Then he made a single stroke with his pen, and got 
up like a man who has solved his problem. He paced 
the room, and, turning, saw her. “Audrey,” he 
cried. “You!” 

“Didn’t you know?” 

‘ ‘ I remember now. A minute ago. ’ 7 

“Fifteen,” she corrected him. 




The Dropped Passenger 301 


“Was it? Thank God, time flies when one’s 
busy.” There was no apology in that, but he ruf¬ 
fled his hair or perhaps he tried, with some intention 
to appear less disordered before her, to smooth it 
and, if so, he failed. His hand passed over his face 
and brought away with it some of the streaky white 
film. “Good Lord, I . . . oh, well, I told you what 
life would be like with me. I was shaving and a 
notion struck me. I don’t appear to have finished 
shaving. I’m not very dressed either.” He was 
defiant about it; intruders were to take him as they 
found him. 

“Did the notion strike you before or after break¬ 
fast?” Audrey asked. 

“Oh, breakfast,” he said vaguely, and Audrey did 
not press the question. She had been through some¬ 
thing like this with her father. Max fished for words 
and forgot to dress and eat, Colonel Evelow for 
trout and though he never forgot to dress he had, 
when Audrey first came home from school, a habit 
of unpunctuality for luncheon. She remembered 
how he came in once and, finding her at tea, made 
virile remarks from the hearth-rug about incorrigi¬ 
ble women who fed on buns. She had disciplined 
the Colonel after that. She had trounced him with 
his own words, she had disestablished the right of 
trout to inhibit punctuality at meal-times. And she 
could disestablish the right of Max’s work to make 
him careless of himself. 

“I wonder,” she said, “if in the long run this is 
how good work is done.” 

“And that,” he blazed with sudden vehemence, 
“from you. From you!” Had she said some- 




302 


The Wrong Shadow 


thing as unjust as Colonel Evelow on bun-eating 
women! “Pm working, and if you’d any sense of 
decency at all you’d not throw stones at that: you’d 
be grateful that I’m working and not doping. I am 
doping, of course, but I’m using a good drug instead 
of an easy one. Work’s a good opiate and I’m 
working, to bring oblivion. Hanging on in this hole 
of a Walthamstow because it’s off the map and I 
can’t be pestered here by fools. At least,” he said 
savagely, “not by the fools who don’t know my 
address.” 

“Thank you,” said Audrey. 

“You deserve all you’re getting for what you’ve 
done to me. Do you know what Dead Sea apples 
are? I do: I’m eating them. They’re success gone 
sour till it sets the teeth on edge. There’s London 
at my feet like a ball to be kicked and ...” He 
caught her smile and, to her astonishment, had a 
smile of his own to answer it. “Oh yes,” he said, 
“I can smile. Mine’s the Comic Muse and a tragic 
muse too when she makes one see the humor of one’s 
own bitterness. London at my feet? Because a 
duchess writes to me at the theater and asks me to 
dine last night! Well, my professional education 
hasn’t included any duchesses up to now. I ought 
to have gone to look at the aristocrats, and I ought to 
have let the aristocrats look at me. The Social 
Stunt. Good for trade. It’s possible it would hurt 
and it’s possible I’d purr to their stroking. I don’t 
know. I didn’t go. I’m here shut up with a job of 
work in a filthy place like Walthamstow, staring at 
work all day lest I stare at you; and you come here 
and you wonder if this is how good work is done! 




TheD Topped Passenger 303 


Then I’ll tell you. It isn’t. The reply is in the 
negative. The best work doesn’t spring out of the 
blackness of a man’s soul when he’s been done down 
by the woman he loves. It may, later. The artist in 
me may thank heaven for the suffering of the man. 
Emotion recollected in tranquillity. That sort of 
thing. But I’m not tranquil about you yet, and I 
don’t want to write tragedy in any case. There was 
light and joy and hope in ‘Petronelle.’ There was 
the glimpse of a joyous world that I don’t say is, but 
I do say, can be. This damned thing is like a bad 
spasm out of Strindberg; it’s a pessimist’s night 
out; it’s gray streaked with black and blood. 
It’s—” 

*‘Fuel for the refuse-destructor, then.” A play¬ 
wright’s harikari, at his own assessment of it. 

“I don’t know that it is. It’s the child of lamen¬ 
tation, but I don’t cremate my children.” 

She put her hand on his shoulder. She was strong, 
she thought, to steady him, and the feel of him 
through his shirt brought her almost to collapse. 
She seemed to handle naked bone, and the smile be¬ 
hind his words seemed to her the bravest thing she 
had ever seen. Literally, he had drugged himself 
with work, literally he had starved his body and 
written with fierce concentration to forget her. 
There was no blague in him; there was, no doubt, 
neurosis, but loneliness wasn’t helping that. Well, 
he wasn’t to be lonely now, but neither did she think 
that tenderness from her would help him out of an 
abyss of self-pity from which he was able almost to 
rescue himself by irony. He had promised her a 
struggle, and, heaven knew, from the gymnasium 




304 


The Wrong Shadow 


onwards she had had warnings enough of the sort 
of struggle she was to undertake. The case of 
Colonel Evelow was elementary; a contrast rather 
than a comparison. 

“ ‘To marry/ ” she quoted, “ ‘is to domesticate 
the Recording Angel.’ This new play of yours. 
It’s—what? The receptacle of your impatience with 
me. It’s served its purpose now.” 

“Do you know what you’re saying?” 

She took up a handful of the scattered papers on 
his table. “May I tear it up? I shall never try to 
judge your work, but you’ve judged this. You have 
no faith in it.” 

“Not as a play, but—” 

“No. Not as a play,” she cried, and tore, a little 
carefully at first, then, as he did nothing to prevent 
her, with intention to destroy. 

“There’s only one reply to that,” said Max. 

“May it be after you’ve breakfasted?” she asked. 

“Not even after I’ve shaved. I warn you the 
right side’s rough.” Symbolic, she thought, select¬ 
ing it. Soap has a saline flavor. 


IY 

“Look at this,” said Max, bringing her a copy of 
The Times and pointing to something on the picture- 
page. 

She preferred, for a moment, to look at an 
achievement not of Lord Northcliffe but of her own; 
to look at her husband. She pondered the word 
“sleek,” and substituted “smooth”; she acquitted 




The Dropped Passenger 305 


him, with a caution, of sleekness but he was cer¬ 
tainly smooth. Well, it didn’t go deep, this smooth¬ 
ness of Max Peterkin; success wasn’t sitting either 
on his soul or on his ribs like blubber on a whale; 
he had eaten that perilous diet and after the dyspep¬ 
tic days of his Walthamstow seclusion, he had assimi¬ 
lated food of the gods as one who knew he had the 
right; he had Audrey to warrant him the right. 

After six months, ‘ ‘ Petronelle ” still ran in London 
and now it was launched in New York where Peter- 
kin, with his London prestige to back him, had found 
a gratifying authority ceded to him at rehearsal. 
Poise came from that, from their way of letting him 
be busy about his play and from the resulting illu¬ 
sion that the New York “Petronelle” was more his 
than the London. He was her adult man, traveled, 
enlarged; the prize of the gamble she took not only 
when she married him but when she goaded him to 
what seemed, for both of them, the tremendous ad¬ 
venture of going to New York for the production. 

Now, not because of Mr. Wyler’s recommendation 
of the Continent as an asylum for indigent English, 
but beauty-washed, they were in Florence. Audrey 
was enjoying herself and more than herself she was 
enjoying Max. She had looked at him, after Amer¬ 
ica, a little as one looks at an “unfixed” photo¬ 
graphic print, and there was no need to look like that 
at a Max with feet firm planted on the ground he had 
won. He would not fade, he would not relapse to 
the Max of young extremes. He had withstood suc¬ 
cess and trod on it. 

“About you?” she asked, taking the paper. 

“No,” he said, though he did not wince now at the 




306 


The Wrong Shadow 


uses of advertisement; one needn’t be noisy, but peo¬ 
ple had to be told, and a whisper was as wrong as a 
megaphone. 44 No. Not I this time. Look.” He 
watched her quizzically. 

There were two pictures side by side, one of a 
church door, the other of a house. Under the one 
was the caption, 4 4 Miss Gladys Minniver and Mr. 
Francis Bassett, O.B.E., leaving St. George’s, Han¬ 
over Square, after their wedding yesterday. Miss 
Minniver was Chief of Mr. Bassett’s Secretariat”; 
and under the other was 44 Farundell. The Suffolk 
home of Mr. and Mrs. Francis Bassett.” 

Gladys had snatched not one victory but two. It 
was clear that she had her Bassett and hardly less 
clear that she had controverted his ideas about the 
purposes of Farundell— 4 4 the Suffolk home of Mr. 
and Mrs. Francis Bassett.” The paper dropped 
from Audrey’s hand. She was not looking at an 
Italian night; she saw Lord Litherbrow; Farundell; 
Frank Bassett with his conscience and his dream; 
Gladys Minniver the awakening. 

They were far away from her. She had crossed 
and recrossed the Atlantic. She was married to 
Max. What did it matter? But when Max, dull 
about her mood, said gayly 4 4 Little Bassett and the 
Secretary Bird! Audrey, there’s a farce in it,” she 
had tears to fight. 44 If it isn’t a tragedy,” she said. 

44 We seem agreed that there’s a play,” he said. 
44 I wonder, seriously, is there? You could tell me 
things about Bassett that ought to be comic.” 

Yes; they ought to be comic and as Max would see 
them they would be comic. She could trust him to 
show her the humor of it, she could trust him to 




The Dropped Passenger 307 


laugh the tragedy away. Then why not tell? Why 
not, when she had it in her power to make this gift 
to him, the stuff of a possible play? It was as some¬ 
thing seen long ago, impersonally, that she thought 
of Bassett now. Her train had dropped that passen¬ 
ger. But Farundell, the Suffolk home of—Gladys 
Minniver. That was beyond enough; she was a play¬ 
wright ’s wife, her loyalties conscribed by him? But 
he had said ‘‘I’m not quite certain that the theater 
is a faith of yours” and it was true. She couldn’t 
offer up Farundell, the home of Gladys Minniver, 
to be commented on in a comedy. “No. I’ve noth¬ 
ing to tell,” she said. 


THE END 


































































































